Hammer of God

Chapter 31

The Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross was just settling on the chest of Generalleutnant Alfred Ritter von Hubicki, the commander of the 9th Panzer Division. He had received it for the exploits of his division in the recently concluded Balkan campaign, but its luster was suddenly dimmed that morning when Brigadier Kinlan’s attack fell on his line like the Hammer of God.

There was only brief warning when the big 155mm rounds began falling on the forward positions. The guns were so far to the south that no one heard them fire, only the whine of the shells as they fell in the dark, then the hard thump and tremendous power of the high explosive rounds hit home. It was a brief, but violent barrage, and it was extremely accurate, walking right through his main positions and causing a considerable dislocation, and many casualties.

Then there came a distant rumble, which soon resolved to the telltale sound of mechanized vehicles on the move. Moments later dark shapes loomed in the distance, and the troops were experienced enough to know they were under attack by armor. Sergeants on the forward line called back to the Panzer Jager teams manning the 3.7 inch AT guns, those that remained intact, and hands tightened on weapons all along the line. Then the firing began, and a Sd. Kfz 251 was suddenly struck by a heavy round and ripped apart. The 8 ton vehicle keeled to one side, a burning hulk.

A wedge of five Challenger II tanks of the Highlanders 1st Company were in the vanguard, their massive shapes emerging from the smoke of the artillery barrage to the dismay of every man who saw them on the line. They were huge fast moving chariots of death, the massive turrets rotating and firing, machine guns spitting tracer rounds into the line as they came. The German division had fought in Poland, Holland, France, Greece and Yugoslavia, but had never encountered anything like the storm that was upon them now.

The troops expected the enemy tanks to stop and take up firing positions, but they did not stop. Firing on the move, the metal behemoths simply crashed right through the line, their machine guns cutting down men on every side, and that long, terrible main gun belching fire at vehicles and gun positions to the rear.

There had not been a shock like this since the first appearance of tanks in the Great War, and in spite of the hard lesson given Rommel at Bir el Khamsa, the full realization of what the new enemy tanks could do had not yet trickled down through the rest of the army. It was a monster that simply could not be challenged, let alone killed. No anti-Tank gun possessed by the troops could harm it, and filled with the hubris earned from its previous victories, the men of the 9th Panzer Division had not sewn landmines as a defensive measure. In fact, they had been planning to assemble and move south that morning to attack, but their enemy had beaten them to the punch.

Behind the hard tip of the spear came the Warriors, also moving fast, their 40mm guns cracking away in sharp, well controlled three round bursts. Thank god there were not many, thought Sergeant Muller as he watched the scene in near shock. He was on the radio at once, calling for tank support from the 1st Battalion of the 33rd Regiment in position directly behind the line. The battalion had a strong group of 54 PzKpfw III, 18 PzKpfw II and 18 of the heavier PzKpfw IVD infantry support tanks, and now the Germans launched a sharp counter thrust, their armor churning forward through the open fields in attack.

“Tanks!” called Lieutenant Horton on the radio. “Front left!”

He keyed the position on his digital display, assigning the symbol for enemy armor, and within a millisecond every vehicle in the battalion had the threat information on their screens. They were able to turn and react immediately, groups of five Warriors rotating their turrets to engage the oncoming threat, and the big Challenger IIs opening the action at long range.

The Highlanders had pushed right through the lines of the Panzergrenadiers with both companies, and now Colonel ‘Sandy’ Sanderson committed his breakthrough force, the heavy platoon of ten more Challenger IIs. They surged forward with the Warriors of his third reserve company behind, to even the odds, and then some. His battalion was facing 90 German tanks, but now he had 43 Warriors and 2 °Challenger IIs in the attack. Two Warriors had been damaged and were ordered back to the start line, but the bulk of Sanderson’s force was unscathed. The fire they put out, seeing their targets at long range with their thermal sensors, was devastating.

One by one the German tanks were hit and destroyed. It was the Challenger IIs that wreaked the most havoc, their heavy rounds completely obliterating any target they found. A three round burst from a Warrior was enough to put serious hurt on the German tanks, though some survived to get off shots of their own-until a Challenger rotated that massive turret and blasted them to hell.

Generalleutnant Hubicki was stunned to hear the frantic calls of his tankers on their field radios. He knew his second tank battalion was on the right near the river, and barked an order that it should move to attack, but he was too late. The Mercian Battalion had swept over that ground, and had already engaged the German armor in another devastating, uneven armored duel.

The attack was so violent and swift that it smashed completely through the 9th Panzer Division, devastated the armored reserve battalions, and pushed right on to the north. The presence of the Challengers was unanswerable. Had the Warriors been alone, it might have been a difficult fight, but the Challengers could see and hit the enemy before they even came into firing range, and the British tankers were decimating the German armor, leaving the Warriors to engage anything they missed. It was about 15 kilometers to Rayak, and by mid morning the British were attacking the airfield, where they soon encountered fresh German troops that had been marching south in a long dark column on the main road.

Horton stopped, opening his top hatch to get a look with human eyes. He peered through his field glasses, seeing trucks and vehicles ahead, and troops rapidly deploying on defense. Suddenly a barrage of artillery fire began to come in and he knew this fight was far from over.

“Another column,” he said, quickly buttoning up. “Get word back to Kinlan. Black uniformed troops ahead, in force, north of the airfield. How’s our ammo Jimmy?”

“Running thin,” said his gunner, James Crocker. “Twenty rounds left. We’ll need to get to an ammo truck soon.”

“Not bloody likely,” said Horton. “The supply elements are thirty kilometers behind us by now. The Gurkhas haven’t even swept the ground we just rolled over. So make every round count.”

It was good advice, for the dark uniformed troops he had seen deploying were the men of 3rd battalion, Nordland Regiment, of the Viking Motorized Division. The trains had come in that night at Homs, and the men had hastened to get their vehicles ready for a night march south. Behind them would come the men of the Germania Regiment, and the Westland Regiment in reserve. Von Wietersheim would have his entire Korps in the field, and the Vikings were a large formation, with three battalions in each regiment, a recon battalion, MG Battalion and Pioneers.

Now, after a long hard drive of nearly 75 kilometers from Merdjayoun, Kinlan’s two battalions were coming face to face with a division that would establish one of the fiercest reputations for combat in the war.

A Bedouin in the Desert Cavalry Company that had moved to the extreme left of the French position was up on Jebel Aassafir, north of the airfield at Palmyra, when he heard the strange sound of beating wings in the dark. The hard thumping in the distance soon resolved to an evil sounding drone in the sky, and his eyes scanned the overcast cloud cover with fearful glances. He had heard entirely too much, and was convinced something was very wrong. A hasty withdrawal down the mountainside, to a place as far from the sky as he could get, was the only thing on his mind.

The KA-40 was up again that night, moving above the heavy clouds as before, unseen, but clearly heard. Fedorov had made the decision to extract the Marines and yield the fortress. It was either that or they would face a long siege, certain attack, and with dwindling ammunition in the face of heavy odds. Instead they would take to the helo, and fly east to the T3 pumping station for a meeting with the British senior officers.

“Getting back up those ropes might not be as easy as getting down them,” said Fedorov.

“Don’t worry,” said Troyak. “There’s a harness and winch. It’s all motorized. Just hang on tight and they’ll haul you right up.”

“With the Germans firing at my hind end the whole way?”

In the end, that is nearly what it became. The Marines assembled on the roof of the fortress, gathering their equipment into the supply canisters. Two man teams were posted on either side of the fort, and then the helo was vectored in, roaring out of the north, a dark looming shape against the overcast sky.

The Germans in the ruined encampment below were quickly into fox holes, as that sound had been accompanied by withering attacks from the helo’s minigun, though few had ever laid eyes on the beast. They would hear it, up in the dark mist, and then the terrible fire would begin, with lethal accuracy, right on the mortar and gun positions. The enemy could see in the dark! So the mortar teams got as far from their tube emplacements as possible when they heard the thrumming in the sky that night.

Wolff heard it, still frustrated and angry that he had not been able to take that hill. He stepped out from his headquarters at the Temple of Bel, and raised his field glasses, studying the top of the hill closely where the hard stone walls of the old fort jutted like a broken tooth. What he saw next was as puzzling as it was alarming. There was clearly an aircraft of some sort there, but it was not moving! The roar of its engines was apparent, and he rushed to a field phone, finally realizing what was happening.

“A helicopter!” he shouted at a staffer. “The British have some kind of new helicopter.” He had heard of them of course, and knew the Luftwaffe was testing some experimental models, though he had never seen one-until now.

“They are pulling their men out! I could see them on the ropes. Get hold of third battalion! I want them to attack that hill at once!”

His quarry had sat their impudently for days, answering his tormenting mortar fire with equal fire, and daring him to try another attack. They were obviously special forces of some kind, he realized, admitting a grudging admiration for the audacity of this attack. Now they were slipping away!

The field phones rang in Diocletian’s camp, a jarring sound in the backdrop of the old ruins. Sergeant Hermann answered, taking the order that they were to attack immediately, and passing it on to his Lieutenant. Moments later the men were up, and moving across the open ground towards the hill. The MG-34 teams were already beginning to put out covering fire.

Up on the hilltop, Fedorov was in the harness Troyak had described, buffeted by the heavy downwash and deafening sound of the helo. Yet he heard something whiz past him in the dark, and then saw the streak of tracer rounds reaching for him. The overwatch teams began returning fire with their automatic weapons, with Troyak down on the crenulated wall barking orders and seizing a Bullpup machinegun. He stood there, implacable, like a part of the fortress itself, the weapon jutting from his hip as it belched hot gunfire on the advancing German infantry below.

He could barely hear the whistles of the enemy, signaling one platoon after another to advance., and now the fire on the hill became more intense. He saw one round flash into the rotors of the KA-40 sending a shower of sparks down from above. Then he heard a deep growl, the minigun answering with its angry reprisal. He looked up to see the terrible stream of what looked like molten lead erupting from the spinning barrels of the gun, and could only imagine what it must be like to be under fire from such a weapon. Popski’s words haunted him… It was murderous.

Then he felt a hard tug on the cable from above and he was pulled rapidly up to the helo. Four other ropes were down, and the Marines were up them with amazing speed. Then, to his horror, he saw one man fall, hit by enemy fire and shot clean off the rope. His body scudded against the edge of a stone tower, and he saw another man lunge for him, unable to reach the man as he fell. The sight of the Marine’s body falling into the deep shadows of the trench was agonizing. Then, to his amazement, he saw that Troyak had fixed a rappelling line around a stony abutment and was quickly up and over the ledge!

My god, he thought. What is he doing? Three other Marines moved to the scene, with one man securing the line while the other two poured out fire from their automatic weapons. The German infantry was now half way up the hill, a dark tide on the pallid ground, advancing in slow rushes. If they could reach the brow of the hill before Troyak could get out of that trench…

Then he turned when the pilot shouted something from the main cabin. “Incoming aircraft!” In a pulsing moment he thought they were now under attack by German fighters. The minigun had finally expended the last of its ammo, the barrels slowly rotating to a stop in the smoke of their own fire. Now the enemy infantry was hastening forward, and the defensive fire was slackening as the bulk of the Marines were already aboard. To men fired their assault rifles from the open hatch of the helo, and an enemy round zipped past the door-another striking the sliding hatch with a whine. Then Fedorov saw dark shapes in the sky to the west.

Popski had been the first man up, and was in the forward cabin. Now he shouted back some most welcome news, a gleam in his eye. “I’ve just got word from those other fellows-the Argonauts! Here they come!”

Three black shapes appeared, moving swiftly through the night like angels of death. Then they erupted with fire, each one with another minigun that raked the oncoming German tide. The men had a long cable down to the trench where Troyak had linked up the fallen Marine, Now the two men were hauled rapidly up through the downwash, and the three Marines on the tower above hitched up a canister, two men riding it up while the third, Zykov, took a last look over his shoulder before whistling for the final rope.

The X-3s had quickly broken the attack, their fire so devastating that the German assault company seemed no more than frozen corpses on the barren hill, like human magma that had issued from the stark volcanic cone. Zykov clipped the metal C-Ring to the cable, his boot in the bottom foot harness, and up he went, the motor whirring as it pulled the last man out. Then the heavy rotors growled with renewed power, and the helo began to climb away from the tower. They were up into the covering cloud deck, the three dark angels rising with them as the helos headed east.

Fedorov looked to where Troyak sat, with the fallen Marine still cradled in his arms. He met the Sergeant’s eyes, and saw Troyak slowly move his head in the negative. The man’s name tag was burned into Fedorov’s soul that night-SYMKOV. It was the only man they lost, but one life too many. My fault, he thought. What possessed me to think I could use these men to win the war? What did Symkov die for? He was a long time thinking about that as the helos moved east.

Later that night, when the silence had again enfolded the land, Colonel Wolff went up the hill himself to the Fortress of Fakhr ad-Din. He had many more names to linger in his soul that night, their bodies darkening the stony hillside. He realized he had used his men like a lash, in a vain attempt to strike at his enemies as they fled. The thought that he had wasted these men was also heavy on him, but he was to receive one odd consolation when a young corporal came up the stone stairway, holding something he did not recognize.

“What is that?” he said as the corporal saluted, handing him a long tube with an ominous looking diamond shaped end that he knew was some kind of ordnance. The corporal explained that he had found it in a lower chamber, hidden in the shadows.

“I tripped on the damn thing before I saw it,” said the Corporal. “What is it Herr Oberst?”

Wolff took the object, hefting it in his arms, and noting the small tube like eyepiece that was fitted on the long metal shaft. The whole thing was some three feet in length, and weighed no more than 25 pounds. He did not know what it was, but Fedorov would soon learn that it was missing-an RPG-7, with a PG-7VR Tandem HEAT round mounted on the end.