Major Venables stared into his sights at the approaching armour, the accompanying artillery barrage now falling heavily about them, shrapnel from airbursts striking the armour.
“I could have got used to there being no artillery,” his driver said over the intercom, his voice slightly muffled by the mask.
“All good things come to an end…” now it was back to business. “Okay, heads back in the game, we can forget the plough tanks as priority targets, so look for command tanks and AAA vehicles, people.” Mark Venables would have preferred a battalion commander, but he saw three enemy tanks with clusters of antennae, the lead company commanders if their positions were anything to go by. It was too good an opportunity to miss, and destroying all three at once would pay a bonus in shock effect too. Keying his radio mike he began to set it up.
“Hello Tango One One Alpha and Tango One Two Charlie, this is Tango One…”
Bill checked the detector paper that was stuck liberally about himself and his equipment; it was all clear despite the barrage. Had the Czechs in the captured trenches received the wrong directive? No, they were all of them still suited, booted and alert now.
Elsewhere along the Vormundberg, detector paper and electrical devices were being checked but all remained clear. It was unlike the enemy to give more than a couple of minutes’ notice to its own advance troops lest they lose the benefits of surprise.
“Where’s the infantry then?” Stef asked. “Where are the IFVs?”
With that tank battalion now half way between to the sunken lane and the start line a second battalion of thirty tanks appeared out of the trees across the valley.
“How very retro.” Bill murmured, having swung his sights back in that direction.
Each tank carried perhaps a dozen infantrymen clustered upon it, and twice that number crowded behind in the machines wake. A thousand man infantry battalion doing it the way their grandfathers had.
These were also in full NBC order. It had to be heavy going for those on foot as the enemy’s suits retained heat just as the NATO version did.
“What is the betting they only had enough fuel for the tanks, not the grunt buses?”
“Air Red!..Air Red!” the radio blared.
To the rear, the battalions Royal Artillery air defence launched a trio of Starstreak missiles at the approaching threat, and the battalions own dedicated air defence troops stood-to with Stingers.
Two regiments of SU-25 ‘Frogfoot’ aircraft had been assigned the sorties to deliver the underslung ordnance at two locations. No precision bombing was required; however, the munitions required these ground attack aircraft release at a greater altitude than the pilots felt safe with.
The close air support squadrons had each begun the day with fifteen airframes apiece, but with each regiment, or wing, sortieing forty eight aircraft against the US 4 Corps. By midday they were still sending four dozen aircraft up, but only by using the squadron’s spares.
It was midnight now; the losses of the day had reduced the regiments to an average thirty aircraft available to continue the attack, although ground crews worked furiously to repair damaged machines back at the airfields.
A change in orders, a complete change of load-out, and all direct from the High Command apparently. It had delayed the take-off before bombing-up could commence. They were now late as a result and had to burn precious fuel in an attempt to make up the time.
They came from the north east, with the wind behind them, and the approach of both regiments divided up the defender’s assets although one of the regiments had the Vormundberg as its secondary, not primary target.
Flares and chaff were discharged by the lead squadrons which dived towards the earth to evade without pressing home with their ordnance loads.
AAA has a habit of frequently relocating, as that is the surest means of their survival, and none of the firing points matched those of the previous day’s attacks.
The foremost flights of the second regiment were engaged upon dedicated ‘Wild Weasel’, AAA suppression. Having now identified anti- aircraft units all along the Vormundberg they began launching anti-radar missiles, and looking for target’s for cluster bomb munitions.
French, Dutch, British and US units south of the hamlet of Vormund were the focus of the air effort, and weapons flew both ways between the attackers and the defenders, long and medium range missiles passing each other in the sky.
Steve Veneer waited for a green light to appear in his sights and fired immediately, the Stinger launched with its accompanying smoke and audible signature, flying true, and straight into a Frogfoot’s port side engine intake.
Neither Steve nor Andy Troper saw the aircraft hit, they were back below ground inside the shelter bay.
The pilot ejected, leaving the aircraft as it became a fireball and lost consciousness in the blast, falling to earth with his burning parachute trailing behind.
Unnoticed almost, twenty aircraft performed pop-up manoeuvres, tossing half of their ordnance in the direction of the long hill. The weapons did not fall all the way; altimeter fuses triggered them at five hundred feet above ground.
The flashes of the air bursting bombs were eclipsed by falling artillery shells and mortar rounds. Two attackers fell to the air defences and a third aircraft limped home, trailing smoke.
British chemists at ICI in 1952 had discovered a new organophosphate and it was initially marketed two years later as a pesticide under the trade name of Amiton. Obviously ICI were unaware of the full extent of the chemicals effects upon the human nervous system at that time. Inhalation and contact with the skin was extremely hazardous to health as even a 10mg drop on exposed skin would be quickly absorbed by the body. Muscular twitching, running nose, vomiting and a tightening of the chest soon followed before paralysis of the diaphragm muscles caused death by asphyxia. Too toxic for safe use, Amiton was withdrawn from the market but the genie was out of the bottle now. The Ministry of Defence began research on Amiton at its chemical weapons research facility at Porton Down. Once weaponised, Amiton was renamed ‘VX’ and assigned the code name Purple Possum to keep its existence hidden from the rest of the world.
But nothing remains a secret for long.
NAIAD, an easier acronym to say in a hurry than Nerve Agent Immobilised enzyme Alarm and Detector, began to sound as the warheads contents, now falling in aerosol form, triggered the alarms. But for the rain the VX would have been carried upon the wind for the entire length of the Vormundberg.
NAIAD, and its equivalent’s in other NATO units screeched, one-colour chemical detector paper turned blue, Stef and Bill’s M8 paper turned yellow. Only the persistent, lingering nerve agents of the ‘V’ family of poison weapons caused the paper to do that.
The air raid was over as quickly as it had begun, three multi-million ruble aircraft had become fiercely burning wreckage scattered over the German countryside, an elderly Chaparral had been struck by an anti-radiation missile, and Rapier launcher fell to cluster munitions whilst artillery spotters called in the fires on the sites of three shoulder fired launches.
The sniping pair passed on a brief Chem-Rep to the battalion CP and got back to the task of observing and reporting, awaiting the battalions coordinated response.
It was not long in coming.
“Sir, Company Sarn’t Major Hornsby is asking for permission fire. He has a stack of fire missions for his mort…”