Guardsman Morgan was gaping at his furious commanding officer when the first of eight canisters of napalm hit the ground and burst open twelve feet away, engulfing him, the CO and the entire section in flame. He did not die an easy death, none of them did. As the ‘Fitters’ turned hard for home the last two canisters landed atop 1 Company's CP, tearing a gaping hole in the command and control ability of half the battalion’s area of responsibility.
Coming in low and fast under control of the RAF forward observer on the ground, two pairs of RAF Tornado GR4s approached on different bearings in order to make the job of the enemy AAA harder. The first pair was tooled up with HARMs for the AAA radars and the second pair with Brimstone, anti-armour missiles. Five minutes behind them were another two pairs; these carried one HARM apiece amid their anti-armour ordnance.
The first four split ten miles out; their paths would converge over the ruined crops of the fields just east of the Guards position, but separated by several seconds. If any arrived too soon they risked a mid-air collision or damage from ordnance dropped by the aircraft preceding them. If they arrived too late, then the shock effect would be lost and the AAA that much more ready for them.
The first Tornado located targets for its four HARMs whilst still several minutes out and west of the river, popping up for a look-see its threat panel lit up, the enemy saw them too. It broke their locks by descending again and once the panel was clear it turned hard right toward the river, keeping a low hill between itself and the action. The Tornado was low when it reappeared, pulling four G’s in a hard left turn to follow the river north and pickling off anti-radiation missiles as it did so.
Just inside the woodline to the east, three heat seeking, ground to air missiles leapt from launchers and 30mm cannon reached out for the British bomber.
All four HARMs scored on ZSU-23-4 and Strela-1, SA-9 vehicles but the Tornado took a 30mm cannon shell through its vertical stabiliser which did not explode, as it punched out chaff and flares. The air in front of the aircraft seemed to be filled with tracer, all coming straight at the cockpit and the ‘missile launch’ warning was constant. The flares that the aircraft’s threat suite automatically discharged were enough to defeat the missiles fired at them, it was the tracer and subsequent loud impact behind him that caused the young pilot to break left, flying straight into the hillside that was being fought over, at 600 knots indicated speed above ground.
The last aircraft of the four scored kills on armoured vehicles with all its weapons and chose to turn east to egress, banking on the ground to air missiles in the wood line having poor head-on engagement abilities. Both crew members chuckled with relief at escaping the conflict unscathed but neither man saw what killed them, as they collided in mid-air with one of the first wave of four regiments of Su-25 attack aircraft, inbound to pound the NATO mechanised brigade across the river.
From his vantage point, just behind a row of trees in the elevated rear seat of Mi-28A/N Havoc, the Czech staff officer utilised the two-seaters surveillance TV system to watch the battle. He became aware of the colonels death when he noticed that the regimental commander’s voice was now absent from the airwaves. Switching frequencies he assumed command of the battered regiment, giving brief orders before switching back to the Corps frequency where he spoke directly with the Corps commander, logically arguing his point. After three minutes he changed back once more to urge those commanding the companies to begin the forced crossing of the Wesernitz.
The 2 i/c of the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards was unaware that he was now the boss. A heavy air attack was underway, the commander of the attached tank squadron was not answering calls and he had now lost radio communications with 1 Company’s command post as well as the landline link. In short, he was very, very busy.
It took fifteen minutes for a runner from 3 Platoon to establish what had happened to their company headquarters and contact the battalion CP direct, by which time the platoon in the hamlet opposite Barraute reported enemy dismounted infantry clearing the buildings on the east bank and heading for the bridge. The 2 i/c had hoped that the enemy would try to cross it at speed, using vehicles but that was not the way it looked. Rather than have the enemy infantry start ripping out wires from the demolition charges, he gave the nod to the engineers to blow it now.
Freddie and Big Stef were now staring at burning armoured fighting vehicles and the wreckage of fighter bombers, British and Czech that littered the fields before them. Only three of the eight Tornados had escaped unscathed and these accompanied two damaged aircraft westward.
The Guardsmen decided it was time to bug out and rejoin friendly lines, quitting the hide they breathed fresh air for the first time in days, wrinkling their noses in disgust at the flavour of death it carried from the battlefield. They had recce’d a fordable point on the move-in and this was clear of the enemy, who were north of them now and had crossed the railway to begin the assault of the river. As they reached the bank they heard the sound of engines from behind them, emerging from the eastern treeline as the remainder of the enemy division advanced. The flanking motor rifle regiments were aiming either side of the Guards positions, heading for the Light Infantry to the north and Argyll’s to the south of the promontory.
Although 1CG now only faced a formation half the size it had been when it began, they were not out of the woods by any means. By the time the amphibious PT-76 tanks and APCs would reach the crest, the divisions tank regiment, 5th Tanks, would be half way across the fields, following in the late Colonel Eskiva’s footsteps. The dead Guards COs intention to hold for 24hrs at the very least was starting to look very optimistic indeed.
With the loss of their company command post the platoon commander of No.3 Platoon took command of the 1 Company, as the senior officer. Unintentionally, the Czech’s had crossed the river at the juncture of 1 and 2 Company’s real estate, which presented the young lieutenant with the prospect of trying to deal with two assaults on each flank of his company’s front. After a quick call to the battalion CP for the ok, he liaised with 2 Company and passed control of the right flank platoon to them before calling in fire missions on the east where his own platoon was engaged in a fierce fire-fight with the enemy troops in the town.
The anti-tank section moved forward into the copse opposite the fordable section of river below the town where it was joined by two Yeomanry rovers with their Milan posts.
Across the river the Czech commander of the 23rd MRR facing them, was fairly certain that the main British resistance was on the high ground to the south of him and only infantry held the hamlet across the river. The bridge had been blown but he was not unduly put-out by this, the original crossing of the river in years gone by was the wide ford that still existed to the south side of the bridge. His problem was the lack of artillery support as the following division was still road marching forward and the air support was in exclusive use against the high ground, attempting to make up for the lack of artillery, which would normally ‘shoot them in’ to the target with a rolling barrage. The T-72 and T-90s of his lead company would remain on the east bank to provide direct fire support but they were not to expose themselves until all the companies AFVs were in position and about to cross the start line.