“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 23rd 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. 23rd’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.
“112th MRR should be appearing on your right flank at any moment now, they at least advance as armoured troops should, with speed……….111th is coming up on your left and 93rd 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.
23rd 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.
23rd’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.
CHAPTER 7
The western bank of the river at the Soviet bridgehead rose quite steeply for sixty feet and flattened out for two hundred metres before rising again as a low hillside for a further two hundred. To prevent erosion the soil had been seeded with a hardy, long rooted variety of grass and conifers had also been planted five years before for extra binding of the earth.
Armies tend not to be particularly eco-friendly especially when on the move and this one had bulldozed its way up from the river’s edge and away inland. The natural routes up the slopes to open country had been turned into quagmires by countless tracked armoured vehicles and in order to accommodate the wheeled logistical support transports, fresh routes were created by the engineers using chain saws on the young trees, before laying roadways of steel mesh matting across ground undamaged by the armour, up to the nearest metalled road. The result was one less of managed landscape and more of a construction site, with just the odd tree remaining here and there amid the morass of mud and metal.
When the Rzeszów Motor Rifle Division had crossed the Elbe it left a detachment of its engineers behind at the river, as had other divisions, where they could continue the building of further bridges and maintain the existing ones. Twenty-nine pontoon and ribbon bridges had been thrown across the Elbe irregularly spaced so that some were as close as thirty metres from their neighbour whilst others were several hundred metres apart. Speed rather than uniformity had been the prime force driving their construction the night before, to get men and vehicles across in sufficient numbers to establish a secure perimeter on the far bank before NATO could counter attack. The Soviet engineers working on the bridge furthest upstream, the autobahn bridge, had succeeded in spanning the gaps blown in the original roadway by British Royal Engineers, and the first tanks had crossed the bridge by the light of the dawn. That bridge had stood for all of an hour, Turkish F-4s had knocked down the temporary spans along with three pontoon bridges, at terrible cost to themselves especially as all the bridges had been repaired or replaced within two hours.