He heard something screaming toward them, along with everyone else in the CP his eyes were on the log ceiling, as the massive 240mm mortar round arrived.
Colin had split the QRF into two teams of two Warriors and their sections, with Oz commanding one half. He took his two vehicles south with the intention of covering 2 Company whilst Oz covered 1 Company and was on the road when he heard the Czech mortar round pass over head and detonate way off to his right. Despite the distance, landing as it had beyond 3 Company, the explosion sounded like a freight train hitting buffers at full pelt.
Enjoying his role as a commander of troops, the Czech staff officer had ordered the Hokum’s pilot across the plain towards the river where he could better control the 22nd Motor Rifle as it fought on the slopes of the hill. He had been witness to the total destruction of the 21st Motor Rifle Regiment before it had been able to fire a single round at the British to the south-west. He was worried that the same thing would happen to the 23rd MRR, stalled to the north, and the 5th Tank Regiment, which sat behind his own temporary command, providing fire support to clear the enemy so engineers could put a bridge over to the western bank.
The Blowpipe section of 1 Company had temporarily abandoned their launcher on several occasions to fight again as riflemen in pushing off Czech infantry who had got to within 150m of the crest. None of the light support weapons were in action anymore, having overheated repeatedly and been cooled by the battlefield expedient of urinating on the barrels, eventually the breaches had warped. The makers recommended that the weapons be allowed to cool naturally, which reflected how little they knew about the required function of their product. Every available rifle was therefore needed to repel the enemy thrusts.
Guardsman Troper and L/Cpl Veneer returned to the shell crater that served as their firing position and retrieved the Shorts Blowpipe VSRADM, very short ranged, air defence missile. They had enjoyed little success with the weapon so far; its 3000m maximum range and relatively slow speed ruled it out as a counter for fast jets. They had fired ten missiles and received only abuse from the riflemen nearby, who weren’t exactly ecstatic about having them as neighbours in the first place. AAA of any kind are priority targets for an enemy seeking battlefield air superiority over an opponent. The lack of fan mail from the other trenches had pissed off Guardsman Troper, the big man from Lancashire had stood up at one point, the missile he had just fired went wild after a promising start, chasing a Su-25 before deciding to boldly go where no 11kg missile had gone before, straight upwards into the clouds.
“You’s cunts should be grateful we're here, highly trained specialists we are… CO himself said so!”
A clod of earth flying out of the darkness indicated their peers vote of no-confidence, hitting Troper on the helmet where soil and grit added to his misery as it trickled down his neck into his clothing. “Take yer specialisation back to London, ya fuckin’ foreigner!” yelled the unseen thrower. The Coldstream Guards recruit from Yorkshire and the north-east of England, but there are exceptions, Guardsman Troper being a case in point.
“It’s Lancashire… and don’t think I don’t recognise your voice, Arkwright… I’ll have you later!”
As they now sat in the shell crater, the occupants of another trench spotted the two-seater attack helicopter across the river.
“Oye, you!” one shouted.
“The wankers with the Blowpipe… betcha can’t hit this bastard!” Veneer and Troper realised that they were being addressed and two heads popped up above ground level. Troper had a soggy roll-up in his mouth that he spat out on seeing the easy target, 2000m away. Both soldiers looked at one another and said
“My turn!” in unison.
“Fuck off, is it… you missed the last one and I’m senior!” declared L/Cpl Veneer. He jerked Tropers helmet down over the other mans eyes and grabbed the weapon, hauling its 22+kg’s off the ground and scrambling from the hole. Choosing a spot where he had cover from fire from the enemy infantry below, and an unobstructed back blast area, he seated the weapon on his right shoulder. Troper scrambled up beside him.
“You’d better not miss… a fiver say’s you miss?” L/Cpl Veneer was sighting on the target and replied out of the corner of his mouth. “I’m broke… will a photograph of a four pound note and change do?” Troper gave one last look over his shoulder; to check that no one had wandered behind them where the weapons back blast would singe more than eyebrows.
“Done,” he replied, and tapped Veneer on the top of his helmet to indicate he was clear to fire.
The mortar platoon had also been alerted to the presence of the hovering helicopter and lobbed some rounds its way. The impacting mortar rounds were too far away to cause damage but close enough to cause the pilot to pull back on the collective and gain altitude. The Hokum was at a little over two hundred feet up when the 11kg Blowpipe missile impacted above the fuselage in the rotor assembly, shearing the retaining ‘Jesus Nut’ completely off. Fuselage and rotors parted company and both the pilot and staff officer were screaming aloud as the helicopter impacted nose first into the soft soil of a potato field. The impact fractured the fuel cells and aviation fuel poured forth onto the hot metal of the engine, creating a Roman candle of roaring flame in the fields of the flood plain, before exploding in spectacular fashion.
On the crest the four Challengers there withdrew, leaving the infantry to their own devices, ignorant of the fact that the foot soldiers had not received the word to pull back.
Once in position the QRF Warriors wheeled and headed east to a point where they could see the crest, the Challengers passed them on their own way west and Colin called up 2 Company to tell them he was in position. The company commander of 2 Company had received no orders to withdraw and was not prepared to take the word of a mere ranker. Precious time was wasted as he tried, without success to raise the battalion CP by radio and by landline. Common sense should have told the man that a soldier of CSM Probert's calibre was hardly likely to have made the story up so after listening to the man for a few moments, Colin decided to have a one way conversation. There are four categories of officers who hold the Queens Commission, ‘Good’, ‘Bad’, ‘Indifferent’ and ‘Would be good, if only they did not have their heads stuck so far up their own arse’. 2 Company’s OC was in the last group and Colin resorted to subterfuge as he depressed the send button on his radio. When Colin apparently called the battalion CP over air, it sounded to the 2 Company commander that Colin was in radio contact with them, but that for some reason 2 Company could not receive the battalion CPs transmissions.
“Nine Nine Alpha, roger out to you… hello Two, this is Nine Nine Alpha… from Sunray Zero, fall back now in bounds to Three’s location, my call signs will support, over?”
Fortunately, Oz did not have the same problem with the two remaining platoons of 1 Company that were on the crest and the battered remnants of the rifle companies began to leapfrog backwards.
Just before dawn a Battalion a third the size it had been, just 24 hours’ before, withdrew through 2LI and the in-depth 7th/8th Argyll’s, they had far more vehicles than they had soldiers to fill them. The attached RA and REME had also taken losses, the survivors of their knocked out vehicles fought as infantry during the withdrawal. Of the twelve Challengers IIs that began the fight, only eight remained and all bore scars. An hour later they were joined by the RSM and three more empty Warriors. 3 Platoon had not received the order to withdraw, nor a replen of ammunition since the fight started, and the RSM had watched helplessly through binoculars as an infantry attack on the platoons location had reached a crescendo of firing and grenade detonations. A brief silence had followed the enemy assault on the tiny stronghold, before brief bursts of gunfire announced that the enemy was taking no prisoners, whether wounded or healthy.