3 Platoon did not have it so straightforward with their second house, there was a narrow alley running between the two and they had decided on a roof to roof assault using a ladder they had found, to span the gap. They asked the Milan crews for help with an entry point, and a 6.7kg missile blew out a ten-foot section.
After an hours fighting Pat Reed decided that 1 Company was winded, half the village had been taken but the church, a probable strongpoint with its thick walls and the open ground provided by its graveyard required fresh troops so he passed 4 Company through them and into the assault.
Unlike the houses previously encountered, which had received minimal defensive works, the three hundred year old church had been prepared for defence. Wire mesh from garden fences and chicken coops had been secured over the empty windows, the beautiful, ornate stained glass windows having been removed by the Russians, to guard against glass shrapnel. The wire mesh prevented grenades from being thrown through into the building interior. Gravestones had been removed to clear the killing zone of the churchyard so not an inch was uncovered by fire, and the stones stacked 9’ high and 6’ deep in front of the single door, as a barricade it would take time to clear. CSM Probert had no doubt that dead-drops had been prepared below the windows inside, ready to ensnare or impale anyone coming through those possible entrances. The fact that the church steeple, which housed at least two snipers, grenadiers and a couple of machine guns, would need to be dealt with first, went without saying. A troop from the Dragoons was ready to begin dealing with the steeple, after which they would start on the tower it sat upon.
Colin had some ideas, or rather someone else’s, for dealing with the church, and sought out the 82nd’s Captain who commanded 4 Company. Neither man was in the business of ancient building preservation, if it came to a case of either the church, or their own men’s lives. The American was in full agreement and he sent his runner to scrounge for the necessary items along with the British CSMs.
The business of taking out the steeple and tower began, and the Russian’s were unable to do anything about it, half an hour later and the Challengers ceased fire, the top fifteen feet of tower and the steeple had fallen into rubble.
Rather than attempting a costly fire and manoeuvre action across the open ground, a withering hail of small arms fire was levelled at each possible firing point in the church. Under cover of this fire, three small groups of men from the 82nd Airborne crossed the churchyard to gain the base of the church wall. Despite the covering fire they left two of their number lying on the exposed ground. The lengths of wood they carried were used to lift, and hook plastic containers onto the wire mesh, wire coat hangers taped to the sides of the containers snared the mesh and the paratroopers withdrew, losing another man as they went.
The three explosions that followed were not produced by particularly large amounts of explosives, but the results were catastrophic for the defenders in the church.
“It’s a trick the PIRA used to employ against us in Ulster.” Colin had explained. “A three gallon can of petrol hooked on to the mesh, the explosives taped to the street side of the can vaporises the petrol as it is blasted into the building, and a coupla thou's of a second later the vapour ignites.” The home-made fuel/air weapons had turned the interior of the church into a furnace, which was now starting to cook off munitions either stored or in the pouches of the defending Russian airborne troops.
The fight for the opposite side of the street had halted whilst the church was dealt with, but now the fight there renewed, although with less resistance from the defenders, as the majority of their troops had been inside the strongpoint, and who were now very visibly and audibly lost.
The defenders started to withdraw, they were on a loser and they knew it, so they planned to bug out and find another spot to defend, but none made it out of the net the battalion had thrown around the village. A dozen eventually threw down their weapons and surrendered, they were all wounded and the ammunition was gone. Once they had been rounded up the advance to contact was resumed.
1 Platoon led the way out of the village but it did not take the road, that was too obvious and likely to be mined or DF'd, registered for pre-planned Defensive Fire, if the enemy had the munitions or mortars. They took to the fields to the south of the road, forming the point of the spearhead as the battalion continued west.
CSM Probert and his small platoon headquarters element emerged from the village behind the three infantry sections. He had with him his runner, the platoon sergeant, Oz, and an air defence team consisting of the big man from Lancashire, Gdsm Troper and his sidekick L/Cpl Veneer. So as not to draw special attention from an enemy, a platoon headquarters will try to look like any ordinary rifle section, staying well spread out and covering their arcs.
Troper wasn’t watching his arcs of fire when Oz kicked him in the backside; he was grouching to himself and examining the blisters on his hands. Oz walked beside him, telling him his fortune if he didn’t switch on, before doubling back to his place in the formation.
“I thought they were told to hold until the afternoon, at the very soonest?” said a sergeant lying to one side of Captain Bordenko. Nikoli reached across and retrieved his binoculars from him. “No plan survives first contact, sergeant… ” he brought the binoculars up to his own eyes, “… we just have to keep chipping away at them.”
The first troops were starting to emerge out of the western end of the village, and shaking out into section sized arrowheads. Nikoli watched the men running across the snow to take up their positions; they were not burdened down with the bulky Bergen’s, they carried only their fighting order of webbing and the Bergens side pouches as ‘patrol packs’. They were all clad in arctic whites, and as they drew away from the darker background of the village, he had trouble picking them up against the snowfields backdrop that had coated the countryside. He started to lower the binoculars when one of the soldiers emerging from village caught his attention. There was something about the way he carried himself as he walked him behind one soldier and delivered a kick to the man’s backside, before walking beside him with his head canted over, no doubt dispensing some choice criticism. Nikoli had seen instructors at Brecon perform ‘corrective surgery’ in the same manner, and he smiled to himself as it came to him who this man was. He watched Oz run back to where he had come from, and turn his head to speak as he passed one particular soldier. Nikoli focussed on that man and recognised him straight away. So, the enemy coming at them was the Coldstream Guards again, and he began looking for the distinctive American helmets, which would indicate some of the 82nd Airborne was still temporarily fighting alongside the survivors of the guards battalion. The next company to exit the village was American; Nikoli watched that company angle across the fields to take up position, rear right of the company his friends were in. Truly, they had sent the ‘First Eleven’, as Colin would say.
It was time to get back to their first positions, and after crawling backwards off the small rise Nikoli dropped down into the ditch they would use for their circuitous route. By walking in the ditches that bordered the fields they avoided leaving clearly visible tracks in the snow, a signpost stating ‘Bad Guys — This Way’.