The T-72 was back-lit by the flare and that would have to do.
Nev rose up, fired a spotting round and adjusted his aim before squeezing off the 94mm rocket, the third one to be fired by him at this same tank that night. An ERA block performed its design function, but a patch of armour was now exposed. Like a sluggish Mexican wave the AT men popped up and fired. Four 94mm rockets and no kill until Nev launched the fifth, and that finally penetrated and set off one of the tanks own rounds in the automatic loader.
The soldier beside Nev collapsed without a sound, hit in the face by a 7.62 round from the second tank which suddenly came into view.
The crash barrier provided cover from view but little else. Baz and the three survivors lay flat on the wet tarmac before crawling backwards.
The 13 tank came out of a side road and found the T-72’s exposed rear filling its sights, the 105mm sabot penetrated the thinner armour behind the turret where the ammunition bins were, and it blew up.
With main gun raised to maximum elevation the 13 tank negotiated the embankment, but the Italian Pumas encountered the same problem the Soviet BTR had.
Hurriedly, a tow cable was disconnected and left to lie abandoned after a T-90s had towed the BTR up the embankment. Their gunfire support had abruptly ceased and neither T-72 was answering its radio. The BMPs gained the top of the embankment and all six fighting vehicles went straight into the attack, accelerating towards the junction and bridge, the tanks drawing ahead of the infantry fighting vehicles.
The same problem that the BTR found was also being experience by the Italian infantrymen in the 5th Cavalry Pumas. The solution there was to debus and scramble up, hauling up the pair of Spike-MR launchers and missile canisters.
The missiles thermal seekers require no super cooling and they are capable of being launched as soon as the missile canister is attached to the launcher.
The left hand T-90 was struck on its forward glacis beside to driver’s compartment by the 13 tanks sabot. ERA activated and rendered the hit ineffectual, the Soviet tank drove out of the resulting smoke and debris, returning fire.
Aboard the 13 tank a hammer blow was followed instantly by a wave of intense heat before the Halon fire extinguisher cut in. Suffering from flash burns the commander and gunner bailed out, as did the driver. The loader remained where he was, killed instantly by the penetrating round.
The right hand T-90 stopped suddenly, belching smoke and then flame, it was joined a moment later by its neighbour.
Suddenly finding itself alone and exposed the remaining tank began to jink from side to side. Its commander identified the cause of the other two vehicles demise.
“Gunner, HE, infantry anti-tank team!”
“Identified, but sabot loaded!” he reminded the commander.
There was no time waste reloading with a HE round, as the commander could see the crew were attaching a fresh canister.
“Fire!”
“On the way!”
The tungsten dart struck the tarmac beside the Spike crew, a killing result if it had been a HE round.
The Italian AT gunner fired, the tandem warhead defeated the ERA and the T-90 swung suddenly to the right, through the crash barrier to overturn on the steep bank.
Only four LAW80s remained, and with a maximum range of only 500m there were some tightening sphincters as the trio of Soviet IFVs, each with its accelerator mashed to the floor, closed on them rapidly. The BTR and BMP’s 20 and 30mm cannons opened fire. Nev Kennington lay on the wet road, his body at a right angle to avoid the LAW80’s back-blast when launching the 94mm rocket. He was aiming for the driver of the middle vehicle, waiting for the vehicle to come into range when it stopped and began to burn.
The attack by his last infantry, supported by a tank troop, had failed but the Abrams tank seemed to be out of action. He had eleven tanks remaining, how fast could the NATO anti-tank crews reload and how many reloads remained to them?
He would take the junction and deal with the rest of the Italians when they finally turned up.
In two files, keeping carefully to the tracks made by the first of his T-90s when they had attacked this airfield, they left the cover of the forest, the Romanian battalion commanders tank was number two in the right hand column.
“Gunner load HE….”
The lead tank shuddered to a halt with its hatches blowing off, still well within the minefield. The battalion commander had been looking intently at the junction but had not seen any obvious sign of where the shot had come from. He then noticed that the lead tank in the left hand column was also knocked out.
“Driver, go around it.”
Clearly fearful of the mines but more scared of their unseen attackers the driver complied, intending to keep as close to the tank tracks as possible. He pulled out to the left, straightened up, and as he did so the left rear of the track went over a waiting bar mine.
Diesel from a ruptured fuel line would not have burnt, but the petrol in the fuel lines did, spreading to the fuel tank in moments.
Lorenzo’s tankers picked off the Romanian T-90s from their positions back in the forest, targeting the enemy’s engine compartments and being rewarded with single hit kills.
All eleven tanks burned with an awful ferocity.
For the second time that day, Lt Col Rapagnetta swore never to eat pork again.
CHAPTER 5
L/Cpl Veneer and Guardsman Troper were members of the battalion defence platoon’s most unloved, the Billy-no-Mates Section, or Air Defence, to give it its proper title. Every time they launched the enemy marked down the area for special attention. They now occupied a previously vacant location further up the hillside, their former trench having been compromised the previous day.
Drawing upon their previous experiences in the war they did not scrimp on sweat and effort. Extra sandbags were begged, borrowed or on ‘permanent loan without the owner’s knowledge or permission’. Their former 4 Company neighbours, all members of the 82nd Airborne, had greeted the move of the unwelcome pair in the typical heart-warming fashion of soldiers everywhere.
Abuse and catcalls had infuriated Troper as they carried out the move, and on ferrying the final item, a soggy package from his girlfriend via the British Forces Post Office, he had delivered what he believed to be the ultimate of insults to Americans everywhere.
“Yo Mother!” in best broad Lancashire accented imitation of a New York cab driver.
“What?” a mortar man from Minnesota had queried.
“You shagged my mother!” Troper qualified, turning away triumphantly.
There was a short pause as the meaning of the term shagged sank home, and howls of laughter followed.
L/Cpl Steve Veneer had shaken his head despairingly.
“You were meant to say ‘I shagged YOUR mother.’ You twat!”
They were now sat in the shelter bay of the new trench where Guardsman Andy Troper used his pen light to examine the contents of the package.
“That silly bitch cost me a thousand quid.”
Lance corporal Veneer reached across into the package and lifted out his mate’s letter, the same one he had sent to his girlfriend.
Six fine woven rugby shirts, in the Blue-Red-Blue Divisional colours for the Guards had arrived that morning. Troper’s samples were individually sealed in plastic; a large Coldstream Star on the chest of each shirt was flanked on each side by a depiction of a soldier aiming a shoulder launched AA weapon. One held a Blowpipe launcher at an angle of 45° and the other a Stinger. As a means of upping their profile and standing within the battalion the scheme had merit, but it was the execution that had been poor, so not even the most gifted marketing team could have shifted them, even at a loss. In place of the regiments motto, ‘Nulli Secundus’, Troper had elected to have a different form of wording to set off the garment, and it was that wording, which instead of bigging-up the section was in fact a typo that was going to cause derision in the ranks.