During the Great War, which some know simply as WW1, hand grenades came into their own as trench warfare weapons. The casing and explosive fill may vary but the essential concept has changed little.
The grenades now flew thick and fast between attackers and defenders. Wounded victims screamed in agony, dying victims called for their mothers. Here and there the butchery in the darkness was revealed for a split second by a muzzle flash or yet another grenades detonation.
Hand to hand combat, the adversaries indistinguishable from one another where they rolled in the mud. Bayonets and fighting knives stabbed and slashed, rifle butts clubbed and entrenching tools rose and fell, hacking at an enemy’s eyes within the gas mask or respirator that protected them, slicing into throats or necks. And all the time the rain fell like a curse.
Shut down and without power, with batteries at a premium, the Warriors night viewing devices were turned off but Arnie was relying on a more basic system. Even without respirators and hoods that muffled the senses, it would have been difficult to see or hear. Nature was assisting him now and again with a helpful lighting flash, but it meant he also had to stick a patch over one eye to preserve his own night vision. An M8 strip of detector paper filled the bill there. Exposing a thin strip of adhesive backing he had stuck it over the right visor to be his shooting eyes makeshift blackout until the time came.
Lighting strobed now, and he saw the paths either side of the stream were clear for some thirty plus metres, all the way to where it disappeared into dead ground. The stream immediately before the Warrior had created a cutting twenty feet deep in the soft earth over the passage of centuries. Its grassy sides rose at an angle that offered a challenging scramble to fit and young ramblers in peacetime.
Thunder rumbled, and out of habit Arnie had counted the interval, just as he always had since his father had explained to him how he could judge the distance to a storm that way, forty years before.
When the lighting flashed a second time Arnie didn’t have to wait for any thunder to see the storm was almost upon them.
Soviet troops filled the stream cutting.
In the time it took for him to disengage the GPMG’s safety lug and nudge Rodriguez with his boot in warning, the leading man’s left foot had snagged a length of fishing line. Pinned to the ground on one side of the stream was a flare pot, without the flare picket or spring assembly; D10 cable and ground spikes from a discarded IPK, individual protection kit, held it firmly to the wet ground. Opposite the flare pot, on the other side of the stream, a fragmentation grenade had been placed in an old compo baked beans can. Arnie had replaced the timed fuse with a blasting cap so the moment the grenade was dragged from the can, releasing the spring arm, it detonated.
The explosion covered the loud crack of the flare pot activating, its detonator blowing off the end-cap and exposing the white phosphorus filler to the air. Illuminated in the harsh white glare and stunned by the grenade blast, only the quickest were beginning to react when the Rarden and the ‘gimpy’ opened fire. The 30mm cannon was loaded with HE and on the rare event it passed through a body without hitting a bone, the round exploded elsewhere, such as the man stood behind, but the tissue damage and shock would be fatal more often than not anyway. More usually the round exploded in the body, adding bone fragments to the shrapnel it produced.
Firing in short bursts and double-taping, Arnie used the GPMG to pick off the enemy who attempted to escape up the steep sides of the cutting. Spent cases fell from the spring loaded aperture in the underside of the body, rattling noisily on the turret before rolling off its sides, or down through the open hatch to bounce off the floor of the troop compartment with a loud metallic ring.
With the two Americans occupying ‘his’ turret, Chris Holmes exited out of the rear of the vehicle with his SLR and added well aimed rifle fire to that of the automatic cannon and machine gun.
The Rarden did bloody work on the close packed troops but despite that there was return fire coming their way, cracking overhead or ricocheting off the welded aluminium hull. These were not green troops and they employed fire and manoeuvre to back off the way they had come, down into the dead ground, leaving a cutting that was littered with their dead and wounded. The persistent nerve agent, VX, was already beginning to account for those injured men.
In the dead ground a hasty reorganisation immediately took place. The senior surviving officer tried for artillery support but none was available. The supply of artillery rounds was again critical.
The Czech officer believed they had met a defensive position and was planning accordingly, he did not even consider the possibility that it was a deliberate ambush.
The GPMG was silent now, its barrel glowing red. Arnie Moore groped about on the cold wet top of the turret for three lengths of D10 cable which had slipped away due to the recoil of the 30mm cannon, something he had not calculated for. Brushing away the pile of expended metal links which had created the belt of ammunition, his rubber gloves closed on two of them, the third could not be found. No plan survives first contact, and he squeezed the first clicker but nothing happened, the command wire had been severed in the shelling. The second claymore did explode, killing a dozen men, including one of two groups of three that the officer had just delegated the task of tank hunting. All but two of the men carrying RPG-29s had been left lying in the stream or cutting, these remaining two men he had teamed up with a pair of riflemen each.
The blast had now cut his remaining force down to a handful, too few to continue with the plan until the rest of the battalion caught up, but perhaps he still had enough men to exact some revenge now?
The stream ran red, and surprise had allowed them to do grievous harm to the enemy, but that surprise was gone now, they had shot their bolt and it was time to go.
“Corporal Holmes? Give a hand with the cam net, we’re going!” Arnie shouted, trying manfully to drag aside the camouflage net without leaving the turret, but failing. No assistance was forthcoming from the vehicle commander and he looked over the side of the turret. The trip flare was sputtering, its light beginning to fail as it burnt out, but there was enough light to see the dead eyes through the respirator eye pieces, staring up at the night sky.
With a final flicker the flare was extinguished, and with the return of the dark the incoming small arms fire increased.
A grenade, flung hard but landing a little short, detonated and shrapnel struck the armoured sides of the fighting vehicle.
The Warriors Rolls Royce Perkins V8 growled and the cannons thermal sight was powered up. Angelo allowed the grenadier to creep forward and attempt another throw; the second and third rounds were wasted.
“Where’s Corporal Holmes, sir?” Macky asked on the intercom.
“Dead, back us up!”
The hull down fighting position had been filling with rainwater for several hours, completely covering the Warrior’s tracks, and a mini tidal wave was sent to the rear as the IFV left the position. The Warrior took with it the camouflage net, and Arnie had to lower himself back inside and reach for his knife as the net was now stretched across the hatch opening. The nets edges had become entangled in the tracks and it was clinging tightly to the vehicles body from front to rear. It would need to be cut completely free later.
Now clear of the waterlogged position Macky halted, engaged forward gear and began turning to the right, upslope, to take them back towards the centre of the battalion’s lines.
Arnie was about to begin cutting the netting away from the hatch when he was thrown off his feet, and a wave of heat washed over him. Thick, choking smoke filled the fighting vehicles interior and flames flickered at the front of the troop compartment. The Warrior rolled backwards into the stream and came up with a jolt against its opposite bank. Arnie’s ears rang from an explosion but he could still hear Guardsman McCardle who was screaming in the intercom.