“A bit of punctuation and some lower case lettering in your instructions might not have gone amiss.”
“Me biro was playing up in the damp.” came a defensive reply.
“Spacing between words could have made all the difference too.”
“It was dark.”
“How many did you have made?”
“An ‘undred.”
“Never mind mate.” Veneer said with sympathy. “Perhaps some wig manufacturer will take them off your hands after the war.” He handed back the evidence that it pays to be literate. THEM SHI RTS HAVE T OHAVE THE S AME LOGOI NEACH BATC HAIR DEFENDERS.
Steve wondered if the Hair Defender rugby shirts would even sell on ebay? But he kept it to himself as Andy was having a bad day.
There had been no call on their services for almost a day. No fixed wing and no enemy helicopters either. Both soldiers had been on another hillside, above the river Wesernitz, when the Soviets had given the battalion the full and undivided attention of a division’s close air support, artillery and mortars. The day’s light, to token, artillery and mortar fire which accompanied the latest attacks had been a distinct relief even if there had been no opportunity to show their ability again. It had been quiet for a while, but they and their weapons remained ready.
The lull following the previous attack came to an end and with it the artillery and mortar fire.
The armoured juggernaut, 4 Corps, would not be stopped, and fresh orders, a renewed focus on the Vormundberg came into play.
Acting as a tripwire for the battalion, Bill and Big Stef had worked their way cautiously forward, covering only twenty five yards in the space of an hour but finding a spot where they could observe both the Czechs occupying the former positions of 7 and 8 Platoon and the far side of the valley.
All three of 3 Company’s platoons had been withdrawn up the slope by Tim Gilchrist once night had fallen, digging the trenches firing bays in the soft earth but having no time to complete shelter bays. The foot of the hill belonged to the Czechs but most of the stores had been saved. The remainder had been booby trapped and destroyed in an explosion thirty minutes after their departure.
Activity in this captured position was the first indication that another attack was about to come their way.
The snipers passed up on several opportunities to kill obvious leaders, but at least they had located the positions of their next targets when the time came.
Artillery and mortar fire fell to their rear so they saw, rather than heard, when the Czech 23rd MRR’s tanks broke cover and began to advance across the valley towards them.
They came on slower than usual, a mass of tanks, mixed T-76, T-80 and T-90 main battle tanks with ZSU-23-4 and BRDM-2 equipped with SA-9 air to surface missiles were dotted about in the mix.
Despite the circumstances, the almost complete lack of any remaining anti-tank mines, the way was led by T-72 and older T-60s equipped with mine ploughs.
“No APCs, no infantry fighting vehicles at all.” Stef reported back to the battalion CP.
Bill nudged him with his foot. He was not looking across the valley but at the nearby trenches.
“These guys are in an awful hurry!”
Frantic activity had suddenly taken hold amongst the infantry.
“Oh crap; they’re getting suited and booted for NBC, all masked up!”
After the initial, massive expenditure, of chemical weapons at the start of the war their use had petered out. Their principle means of delivery, artillery, had been choked off by the mass airborne landing in the Soviet’s rear.
“They seem to know something we do not…” Stef hurriedly informed the CP of this important fact.
The snipers wore their ‘noddy suits’ beneath their ghillie suits, they ceased breathing as they pressed against the earth out of view to pulled on the masks. Despite the absence of chemical and biological weapons of late, they had continued changing the smock, trousers and air filters regularly. Wet weather can reduce the life span of both filters and suits by fifty percent and it had been raining solidly for two days.
The detector paper sheets that were currently upon their clothing and equipment were now changed as a precaution.
Stef produced a small booklet which declared itself in print to be ‘Detector Paper, Chemical Agent, No.2, Mk 1, Liquid, One Colour’. Bill flipped across another with US stock numbers on the front, M8 Detector Paper, which allegedly identified the group a chemical agent came from, Mustard, Persistent Nerve Agents and the Non Persistent variety.
Stef affixed the small sheets to boots, upper arms, and the backs of their rubber gloves as well as to their weapons.
Back in the battalion CP the staff were hurriedly masking up. All along the Vormundberg masks and gloves were being pulled on and hoods were raised.
The buddy-buddy system came into play, crouching down in pairs to check the seal on your mate’s suit and mask. Once suited and masked there were two main ways of identifying an individual; a hastily printed name in chalk or yellow crayon on a strip of black masking tape stuck to the chest of the charcoal impregnated smock, and one written on a piece of surgical tape on the masks ‘forehead’.
The Operations Officer of 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards looked around for his commanding officer. Pat Reed had stepped outside with the acting adjutant a short while ago. The 2 i/c was aware of the reason, Timothy Gilchrist had informed him briefly of the death of the CO’s son when Tim had been called away to take over 3 Company. The former adjutant and Pat Reed were quite close and such news would have best come from him, but as ever in war that ideal circumstance, bad news broken by a friend, is often denied to us.
With Tim now the OC of 3 Company there was another slot to be filled in the command chain, albeit temporarily. The acting adjutant had returned from his unenviable task but the CO had not. ‘Ops’ was the third in command of the battalion and raised the radio handset quickly.
“Hello all stations address group Hotel Zulu, this is Nine Bravo, ‘Sceptic Arrow’ over.”
The company, squadron and battery headquarters that were part of the battalion, or attached to it, began to answer in turn and inform their own sub units.
A figure in full NBC entered the CP, identifiable by gait and bearing as Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Reed, and the Ops officer vacated the CO’s command spot.
As Pat Reed took his place the Ops officer looked into his commanding officers eyes, bloodshot with very recent outpourings of grief but now with a certain hardness, and anger, he had never seen in Pat before.
Once more the Hussars Challenger 1, 2s and Chieftains 10s occupied fighting positions. The CO wanted to open the defence with a TOT, a timed on target shoot, with all the heavy weapons available to the battalion hitting the enemy at the same instant. The different ranges and trajectories were all worked out by the artillery rep for the battalion but the target very much depended on the enemy’s choice of approach route. The resulting Soviet counter battery fire meant the TOT could only happen the once because shoot and scoot would then be the name of the game. As they only had that one opportunity to inflict maximum damage and a telling shock effect they had better get it right, and those had been Pat Reed’s words early in the evening.