“The rot has started then.” General Hesher said. “The first of rats are abandoning ship.”
“There is more sir and I am also awaiting a response from the commanding officer of Eskadrille 723.” He handed across the message form from General Pierre Allain.
General Hesher read it twice and looked across at his liaison officers from the Dutch and Belgian forces.
“Has anyone from your General Staffs been in contact about the possibility of your brigades extracting themselves from the line and from further combat with the Red Army?”
Colonel Van d’Kypt of the Royal Netherlands Air Force answered for them both.
“Oddly enough we were just discussing phone calls we received on that very subject.” He continued. “Apparently no one on the General Staff of either of our countries could be reached, and someone claiming to be my governments defence minister called me direct.”
“Mine too.” Interjected Belgium’s Colonel Loos.
“And?”
“He didn’t know the password and so I hung up.” Colonel Van d’Kypt replied.
“Password?” General Hesher asked. Secure, single source communications with automatic voice print verification between seats of government and a main headquarters made such things as passwords redundant.
“We can’t do anything without a correctly authenticated password sir, but try explaining that to a dumb ass civilian.” said Colonel Loos, interrupting his Dutch colleague. He went on. “My guy got quite rude and made personal comments about my parentage and lack of a future.” The Belgian soldier shook his head sadly. “Naturally I also terminated the call.”
“Thank you, gentlemen.” General Hesher gave a little hint of a formal bow. “I mean that sincerely.”
Both men returned to their work and his aide handed him yet another message slip.
Dave Hesher smiled as he read the response of the commander of the Danish helicopter squadron, Eskadrille 723, to his governments declared neutrality.
“Even if the Danish Prime Minister were thirty years younger, that position would still be a physical impossibility.” He gestured to the green chinagraph pencil his aide still held.
“Toss that thing in the trash.”
Pat had allowed himself to become distracted by a grief fuelled inner rage and that had blinkered his thinking. Men had died who need not have, and that was unforgivable.
He took a moment to refocus, to force away the pain and then he took a deep breath.
“The infantry still approaching from the sunken lane are now the priority target for the defensive fires. Get the mortars and SF kits on that now.” If he could isolate the Soviets, just as they were doing to his men, then they could be dealt with once the attack on 3 Company was defeated.
Pat Reed did not say to himself “If” because he knew what his men were capable of.
“The tank borne infantry on the right, what is the status there?”
“We couldn’t stop them sir, they and the troops already on the old 8 Platoon position are advancing up the slope as we speak, but the Hussars, ours and those with the Jocks, they are thinning out the 23rds tanks.” The Ops Officer reported.
Pat looked up as if something had suddenly occurred to him
“Where’s the sarn’t major?” Pat asked, not seeing the big American in the CP bunker.
Not far from the spot where 1CG’s Padre had been butchered by Spetznaz troops in the guise of Royal Marines, a Warrior IFV sat silently in a narrow, hull-down fighting position before a steep sided cutting that the stream flowed through. Ideally they would have had claymores in the cutting but the ground was very confined here and they had to work with what they had and make the best of it. The camouflage nets that disguised the Warrior had been skilfully arranged by the vehicle commander and Arnie Moore, the Top Sergeant of the half battalion of the 82nd Airborne that had been mated to the decimated British Guards battalion months before. He became the combined units RSM following the death of WO1 Barry Stone in combat back on the Elbe. Arnie was listening to the short lived fight between the Territorial Army soldiers and the tanks down the hill.
The other members of the Warrior’s crew would have been happier to have sealed up the vehicle before the chemical weapons attacks but Arnie was in the open commander’s hatch. The pintle mounted ‘gimpy’ already charged and just the safety lug applied.
The vehicles commander, Lance Corporal Chris Holmes, came from Middlesbrough. He was generally ignored on a social level by the driver, Guardsman McCardle, who considered anyone from south of Sunderland to be a southerner. The vehicle’s previous gunner had been born further north than both of them, in Wallsend, and had referred to them both as being one step removed from Cockneys. A sniper had killed the gunner back on the Elbe and his replacement came from a wee bit over to the west. He didn’t understand the offside rule, leg-before-wicket, or even the difference between Union and League. The British driver and commander didn’t like the stop and start of American football or ‘Rounders for boys’, as they termed Baseball. That kind of put a crimp on the usual source of male bonding conversation when the new gunner had first joined the crew. However, sufficient common ground had been found when it was revealed that the 82nd paratrooper was a reservist whose day job was that of a croupier in a Las Vegas casino. Given that the driver’s Dad, an electrician, had once rewired a betting shop in South Shields, it served as sufficient foundation for a sound comradeship between Guardsman ‘Macky’ McCardle and PFC Angelo Rodriguez.
The 30mm Rarden cannon in the Warrior’s small turret takes its name from its manufacturer, now defunct, the Royal Armament Research and Development establishment, Enfield, and the gunners training had been provided by the driver, with a non-technical introduction and insight into its rather user unfriendly operation.
“It’s gannin ta be a reet focken pain hand cranken the fust roond, fer ya marra!” but demonstration and imitation had made up for the language barrier that exists between English speakers from opposite sides of the Atlantic. It fired two types of ammunition, APDS, armour piercing discarding sabot, and HE. By day the HE rounds were recognisable of course by their yellow tips, and the three round clips were also yellow. At night, two round holes in the clip ensured correct identification by touch. APDS had black clips, blue tips and one hole in the clip.
A problem arose they engaged a target of opportunity with less than three rounds and lost count of how many rounds had been expended. Three clips were loaded at a time but it was important to count the rounds as they were fired or a ‘gap-in-feed’ would necessitate a full unload of the weapon followed by a reload. After three rounds a fresh clip of three had to be loaded despite there still being two full clips ready. The mantra was ‘Three rounds fired… three rounds required’.
“Divent forgit, nay single roond blats or ye’ll fockoop. Three roonds at a time is easy tay count, but mind ya hay-a couple o-loose ones tay hand, reet?”
The miserable weather was never ending, or so it seemed. When was it that they had arrived here, and it had been a crisp and white hillside, was it only a week? The stream had been frozen over back then, but Arnie had seen its potential as a highway into not only their battalion’s rear, but into all of those of the defenders on the Vormundberg.
Downhill, away on the left, 51mm mortars fired on a higher and higher trajectory as the enemy drew ever closer. Grenades exploded, anti-tank weapons launched with a bang and the T-90’s gun fired HEF at the dug-in light infantrymen. The fighting grew in intensity.