“The Russians are closing in,” Captain Bellamy said. “Captain Grey was requesting permission to engage them directly…”
Trombly shook his head. The Royal Marines had had a busy couple of days, setting up as many ambushes and booby-traps for the Russians as they could, unloading all of their considerable bad feeling on the hapless Russian soldiers. The Russians outnumbered the marines and had artillery support; the bombing was bad enough, but once they brought up their heavy guns, the Marines would be ground down and wiped out. They had won all the time they could…
“Send the recall signal,” he said. The SAS soldiers would melt into the countryside; hiding and reporting in using satellite transmitters locked into American satellites. They would report on what the Russians were doing until they were pulled out or the Russians caught them. “Remind everyone that if they miss the boat, they will have to follow the emergency procedures… or swim to England if they are really desperate.”
He scowled. His Marines had swum the English Channel more than once, certainly more than they had ever admitted to publicly, but that had been under ideal circumstances. Would tired and battered Marines be able to make the same swim at a far longer distance from friendly shores? He felt bitter; a handful of his men had volunteered to remain behind as a rearguard, fighting until the end, but there had been no choice. They had all had to be pulled out; they were going to be needed.
“And set all of the CADS on auto-engage,” he said, as the Marines came running back to their transports. Many of them had seen to it that the Russians would get a few unpleasant surprises as they tried to recover British equipment; others were silent, contemplating not only defeat, but also the possible future for their own country. “We may as well give the Russians something to worry about as they close in.”
He clenched his teeth. “It’s not as if they have had anything else to worry about…”
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Battle of France
France is invaded; I am leaving to take command of my troops, and, with God's help and their valour, I hope soon to drive the enemy beyond the frontier.
Lorraine, France
“They’re on their way, Mon General,” the young officer said. He seemed painfully young for his role. “They’re sending in aircraft and helicopters.”
Lieutenant-General Vincent Pelletier nodded once; his command post had been carefully hidden with all the professionalism that the remains of the French Army could mount, hidden from Russian bombers. France had gone for seventy years without hostile bombers dropping bombs on French territory; now, it was as if seventy years had been swept away and Hitler’s legions had returned to terrorise the population. Pelletier knew that the fight was probably futile, but if… if he could give the Russians a bloody nose, if a provisional government could assume the reins of power, if… if… there might be room to save something from the wreckage of France. If…
Pelletier had been on an exercise when the Russians had launched their first attack, and then the streets of Paris and several other cities had dissolved into chaos, forcing him to try to bring together the remains of several French units to try to put an end to the chaos. He had done well, he knew he had, but it hadn’t been enough; his manpower had been so sharply reduced by the combined pressure of missile attacks and the insurgency — which had been specifically targeted on military and police personnel — that he had barely been able to save Paris. By the time he had battered a multi-sided insurgency into submission, or at least quiescence, the German line had broken and hundreds of refugees had started to stream into France, finally providing him with some intelligence of what was happening to the east. Two weeks of fighting an insurgency had taken a bitter toll; his forces had been drained of most of their ammunition and supplies… and what stores they'd had had been hit or looted by the rioters. The air force was non-existent… and, as for the Navy… well, most of the ships had either gone to try to cut the Algerian supply line, or had been destroyed in the opening attacks.
“Order our forces to deploy,” he said. “Tell every man that… France expects every man to do his duty.”
He had done the best he could, hoping that the Russians would outrun their supply lines, or the Germans would pull off a miracle, but it was not to be. His forces had been shattered and rebuilt; there hadn’t been anything like the time he had needed to create a proper army. He had even thought about offering the insurgents amnesty if they agreed to join up, but he knew that the Russians would just have brushed them aside, even if they could be trusted. The French reserves had been allowed to slip too far; his force would do what it could, but it wouldn’t be enough. He had dug in near Nancy… and all it would take to shatter his defence line was the Russians coming in from Belgium, even if French soldiers had done what they could to smash up the approach routes.
It was a British quote, but he couldn’t think of one that was more appropriate. There was nothing to do now, but wait. It would only take the Russians a few hours at most to reach the defence line; he hoped that he understood their strategy properly. His army was the last major obstacle that they would face before Spain; they had no choice, but to attempt to engage him. He had prepared as best as he could for the worst… and he had a sneaking suspicion that the ‘worst’ was about to happen…
How had it all happened? Pelletier turned it over and over again in his mind; how had it happened? There were parts of France only just beginning to wake up to the fact they were at war, other parts torn apart by one insurgent faction or another, from four different Islamic factions to students, nationalists and even socialists. The President was dead, the Prime Minister was dead; Pelletier couldn’t even use the nukes without the codes that had been lost when the emergency command centre had been bombed. France had failed to grasp a nettle, she had failed to either repair her damaged society, or to take precautions against an insurgency. They had believed themselves safe, invulnerable; they had been proven spectacularly wrong. They had concluded, rightly, that no insurgency could long succeed… but it hadn’t mattered; the Russians had used the Islamic groups as cannon fodder. They had soaked up French bullets that would otherwise have been fired at Russian soldiers.
Pelletier forced himself to sit back calmly. It would all be over soon.
“Fire,” General Shalenko said.
The Russians had moved up twenty-five MLRS units and hundreds of heavy guns, all transported through a largely undamaged German rail network, most of which hadn’t even been damaged by the fighting. Unlike in Britain, the German transport network had been left more or less alone — although the weight of thousands of heavy tanks was taking its toll — and it had been rapidly pressed into service, with the unwilling help of thousands of Germans who had been told that it was a choice between working or starving. The guns fired…
Russian satellites had pinpointed the location of most of the French defenders near Nancy, a large French city; the French had done a fairly good job of getting their forces into position to stand their ground. Shalenko knew better than to think that the French would simply run at the first shot; the Russians might well have done the French a favour by wiping out the higher command of the French Army. Political skills had been rewarded; military skills had been considered of secondary importance, at best. General Éclair had been that rarity, a competent general who was also a more-than-competent politician; had he survived Sudan, EUROFOR might have been able to recover in the opening days of the war and fight back successfully. The French armoured units would be almost immobile now, their fuel and weapons supplies limited; he had to remind himself not to assume anything. They could have used civilian fuel in their tanks… not that it would have mattered.