On each occasion that NATO aircraft had attacked, several bridges had been temporarily put out of action, but the attackers themselves had been hacked from the skies.
The company commander of 43rd MRRs engineer company had charge of four of the bridges, of which one was closed for repair and maintenance at any given time, but the weight of traffic had taken its toll on all of the temporary constructions. For twelve hours the bridges had been at maximum capacity as fifteen divisions had crossed onto the western bank of the Elbe. Once the bulk of the armour, headquarters echelons, and divisional logistic and combat support units had crossed, and convoys had moved the various divisions supply dumps over to the west of the river he had to take three of the bridges out of service for some emergency TLC. This remaining bridge was for east to west traffic and its approaches, as with every one of the river crossings, was marked at intervals showing it to be either an ‘Up’ or ‘Down’ route and field police checkpoints out of sight of the river were enforcing the correct flow of traffic.
On the eastern bank, close to the flowing waters, a temporary heliport had taken shape. Served by the helicopter regiments ground support vehicles it had managed a quick turnaround for aircraft requiring only reloads and fuel, but demand had outstripped available fuel stocks so a pair of Havocs and three Hind-Ds were on the ground there now, their engines shut down, the metal ticking as it cooled and contracted. The crews had gathered at a field kitchen were they sipped at scalding coffee and wolfed down hot food as they waited.
Security on the ground for the bridgehead was a fraction of that employed on air defence, the AAA sites were in evidence wherever anyone cared to look but less than a battalion of infantry and two companies of military police were forming the immediate perimeter. The land war had moved on and this area was now secure from ground attack, that was the official line, and no one had dared to ask why only fifteen divisions had crossed to the west of the Elbe, no one asked the nature of the business that was keeping three divisions tied up east of the river.
Outside of the General Staff and of course those units engaged in trying to unseat NATO Airborne forces from positions in their rear, it was not common knowledge that many of the most direct supply lines from the east had been cut, in fact for those in the know to be caught talking about it was to invite summary execution for the offence of defeatism.
There was a fairly steady flow of trucks going east to bring up more stores and war stocks, replenishment for the divisional depots, and ambulances were much in evidence too, but busy with a multitude of tasks the Major of Engineers did not notice that the traffic from east to west should have been heavier. His world was filled with the noise of metal on metal, tools being wielded in manual labour and the sound of his men exerting themselves in order to have the bridges fit to carry traffic once more and themselves back on dry land, close to the trenches for when NATO fighter bombers came visiting again.
A locking pin for one of the bridging sections had become bent and required changing before it sheared, the major and a sapper were employing muscle power to take the tension off the joint connecting both sections. They were using a manual winch attached to a length of steel hawser, anchored at one end to the other section, and it required their combined weight to take up the slack, working as they were against the rivers pull. Two other sappers were over the side of the bridge, suspended by safety lines over the water as they attempted to extract a banana shaped pin from a long straight hole. After fifteen minutes of sweat, the pounding by hammers and the grunting of obscenities aimed at the god of inanimate objects the offending item came free and was swiftly replaced. The major leant, panting and perspiring against the fender of the utility vehicle which carried much of the ancillary equipment, including the winch they had used. As the pin checkers pulled themselves back onto the road bed and moved along the bridge to the next section, he waved away an offered cigarette and looked toward the western horizon, judging that they had less than an hour’s daylight remaining. Because he was looking in that direction he saw the vehicles at the top of the furthest rise, the sun was behind them and he had to use a hand to shade his eyes.
“What are those morons doing coming east on a westbound route?” He was speaking to himself but his companion stared in the direction his company commander was looking.
“Maybe the MP’s are asleep, sir?”
Asleep or not he couldn’t allow the vehicles onto the wrong bridge and he despatched the sapper to direct them in the right direction. The soldier jogged along the bridge towards the western bank and the major wiped the sweat from his eyes with a sleeve before fishing a water bottle from a pouch on his belt. He took only enough to rinse out his mouth, gargling briefly before spitting the fluid into the fast flowing waters of the river and replacing the bottle securely. A line of a dozen fuel trucks escorted by BTR-70s, was making its way slowly west across the bridge upstream of the one on which he was stood, he studied the way the bridge sections reacted to the load with a critical eye. It needed some serious work done on it before long or it was going to come apart, but that was a problem to be addressed by the Bulgarian engineers who owned it, not him.
Looking back towards the western bank he noticed that the vehicles on the skyline had not moved down towards the river, but some of them were moving left and right, away from the line of march so perhaps they had managed to work it out for themselves unassisted. By shading his eyes again he could now see that the traffic appeared to be tanks, so they had to be well and truly lost to have arrived back at the bridgehead.
His sapper had trudged halfway up the bank but had then stopped, turning and running back down the slope, losing his footing at one point and was now back on the bridge, waving his arms but the major could not hear what was being shouted. He looked back up at the crest at one of the tanks traversing the skyline, and saw that its main gun was pointing towards the bridge carrying the fuel convoy. Understanding came to him just before gun smoke spouted from its muzzle.
The 120mm HESH round screamed above the line of vehicles to strike the rearmost, the BTR at the convoy’s tail end. A second round struck the lead vehicle, another BTR and left it burning, blocking the way for the trucks.
The Leclerc tanks of the French 8th Armoured Brigade on the high ground above the river started what would be a steady and systematic bombardment to destroy the bridgehead.
Machine gun fire cut down the running sapper and realising the position they were now in the major ran to the downstream side of the bridge, tearing off his belted equipment and steel helmet as he shouted a warning to his men. The unseen machine gunner switched fire to the running officer and the cracking sound of high velocity rounds passing close by spurred on the major who dived headlong into the frigid water. A tank round exploded the fuel truck at the head of the line now trapped by the wrecked and burning BTRs that had been the escort. Needing no further encouragement the sappers of the 43rd’s engineer company followed their commanders lead, leaping off whichever bridge they happened to be on and swimming for it.