' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (11 page)

Whatever the reason for the Russian’s actions the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery’s M109s received the fire mission. The 155mm guns fired on it, but only a single round per gun.

The Russian counter battery was fast but it still hit an empty sack, whereas the air bursting 155mm rounds destroyed two tubes and killed or injured a dozen mortarmen.

The artillery’s game of dodge-ball had begun.

The Russian mortars fire stuttered and failed but fallen trees and amputated boughs lay tangled on the floor of the wood. In amongst that wreckage was Dougal Ferguson’s platoon.

Each man knows his number in his own section and the section commanders used this to call the roll.

Dougal had feared that the platoon had been wiped out. It was not as bad as that, but it was not good either.

Initially they had one dead, three wounded and four were missing. Two of the missing men were the snipers and a crater sat at the spot where Dougal had last seen them running forwards.  The remaining pair had been inside their trench’s shelter bay, protected from airbursts and the shrapnel from tree bursts, but a near miss had collapsed the trench on top of them. Frantic digging had uncovered the soldiers but they were as dead as if it had been a direct hit, asphyxiated by the weight of earth as much as by the lack of oxygen.

When counting the listening patrol, which had to be presumed dead, the platoon had lost just over half its strength. The three wounded were passed back to the company sergeant major for transport to the brigades medical aid centre, but the dead were left where they had been found because the artillery and mortar fire began again, prepping for the next attack.

CHAPTER 4

Ariete Task Force

Autobahn 2, 16 miles east of Brunswick, Germany.

The Recce Troop, 5
th
Cavalry Regiment of the Ariete Armoured Brigade led the way in their four-wheel Lince multi-role vehicles, speeding ahead of the task force.

Lt Col
Lorenzo Rapagnetta had been given the task of finding and destroying the missing Romanians, the T-72 and T-90 MBTs along with their accompanying BTR-70 and BMP-2 IFVs. Pierre Allain had been clear and precise in the orders he had given, as he had also been with his explanation as to why the Ariete had been selected for the task. The ground they had been defending was more suited to an infantry heavy unit with howitzers for artillery support such as their northern neighbours, Britain’s ‘3 Para’ in the leg infantry role, and the 105mm light guns of 7 Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery on dedicated call. He was to leave the 11
th
Bersaglieri Regiment, two companies of the 5
th
Cavalry Regiment’s infantry and all but a battery of the
132nd Artillery Regiment. The remainder of the brigade, its thirteen surviving Ariete main battle tanks, an infantry company mounted in Puma AFVs, three
PzH 2000 155mm SP howitzers and a recce element were to reinforce the Mississippi National Guardsmen of C Company, 2/198th Armored.

SACEUR, General Allain, was positive that the enemy force, possibly a tank battalion, was driving towards the nearest of the critical autobahns. By seizing Autobahns’ 2 and 39 where they met east of Brunswick, the Red Army would have fast transit routes to all of the Dutch and Belgian ports.

Lorenzo knew that SACEUR was aware of his brigade’s current state, and Lorenzo was also aware of the condition of the 2/198
th
. Both units had been in the thick of NATOs fight with the Soviet 10
th
Tank Army, fighting that numerically superior monster to a standstill only to have then been struck by the fresh Third Shock Army, which then forced the Elbe.

Lt Col Lorenzo Rapagnetta’s Ariete MBTs from the 32
nd
and 132
nd
Tank Regiments together numbered only slightly more than a soviet tank company mustered.

God help them all if the Romanian strength was an underestimation.

The order of march was the 5
th
Cavalry’s Recce Troop followed by the Puma equipped infantry company, the six tanks of the 32
nd
, the 132
nd
’s seven tanks. The big German built 155mm SP Howitzers and finally the ammunition train, armoured ambulance and combat engineers armoured recovery track, with his second-in-command in a Dardo infantry fighting vehicle bringing up the rear.

Lorenzo had considered commandeering the M-113 but quickly disregarded that idea. The older APCs, the boxy battle taxis, had been pensioned off gradually as their Dardo and Puma replacements were rolled off Iveco’s production lines at a pitifully slow rate. The specialist mortar, ant
i-tank, air defence and command versions had yet to appear owing to budgetary constraints. It frequently left the army with geriatric command and heavy weapons vehicles sat on their lonesome awaiting recovery or repair as the rest of the army disappeared into the distance. Lt Colonel Rapagnetta had elected to hop aboard the infantry company commander’s Puma instead.

Lorenzo was originally an infantryman before being posted to an armoured squadron on receiving his majority, and as such held to the wisdom of the footsore, ‘Never walk when you can ride.’ He had however declined to spend the journey in the commander’s position, his perforated Gortex defied his best efforts at repair and besides, it was nice to be out of the rain. All in all it was an invigorating experience after the snow and ice of the Elbe’s
defence, and the rain and mud of the Flechtinger Höhenzug of course, to now be speeding along smooth tarmac and enjoying a heater’s warmth without worrying about thermal signatures.

Lorenzo’s plan was simply to drive hell for leather along the auto routes to Autobahn 2 which he would follow at speed to most quickly reinforce the US troops at the autobahn junction. Once there they would go-firm and his recce troop would sweep back towards the scene of the breakthrough and locate the enemy armour.

The Romanians had a head start on him even though they were moving across country, so he had little choice but make this non-tactical dash.

With luck though the enemy had simply run out of fuel, as that was being reported of other Soviet units. 

“Colonnello?”

The infantry’s OC was bending down in the commander’s hatch.

“Si?”

“Active jamming on the 2/198
th
’s frequency, sir.”

There are several methods of interfering with radio communication, and obviously the so called ‘silent’ jamming is preferred as there is no immediate warning that it is taking place. Active jamming is cruder and also instantly recognized for what it is.

Lt Col Rapagnetta removed his helmet and slid the vehicles radio headset into place, listened for a moment and chuckled.

Someone with a sense of humour had tied down a microphones transmit switch and placed it before a speaker blaring out a Rap song.

“Rap is to music, what firing a handgun sideways is to marksmanship.” He opined. “But it serves as a declaration of intent here.”

“How so?”

“In Mississippi good music is considered to be a mournful song about how their dog died and their car broke down, not an out of key chant about how their ‘Ho’ was unfaithful. I can’t think how they could more greatly offend a country and western fan.” Lorenzo grinned, but then it faded. The time for joking was past, and it seemed SACEUR may have been correct.

“Order the recce troop to stop, switch off and report back with anything they hear. They are only about 10k from the junction, yes?” 

Five kilometres ahead of the task force the recce vehicles pulled off the autobahn and onto one of the many purely functional truck stops that serve the German road system. The Lince drivers switched off and they listened.

The rain fell unrelentingly, drumming on the thin skins of the vehicles so the troop commander left his to walk a short distance away.

The rumble of battle to the north was all there was and he cursed the rain before turning back to the shelter of his Lince but he froze in mid stride. Whatever had caught his attention was not repeated for several moments but when it recurred he broke into a run, cursing again but not at the rain this time.

Pulling open his vehicle door he barked at his radio operator.

“Tell ‘Six’ I can hear main tank guns firing to the west!”

TP 33, MSR ‘NUT’ (Up), Autobahn’s 2 & 39, east of Brunswick, Germany: 19 miles south-west of the Vormundberg.

For only half an hour Lieutenant Franklin Stiles, acting CO of C Company, Second Battalion, 198
th
Armoured Regiment, had been asleep on the folded down seats along one side of the first sergeant’s M113 APC. His rest was disturbed by the tinny sound issuing from a radio headset and whatever it was it was not a message, and that fact crept into his subconscious and brought him to a state of reluctant wakefulness.

“What IS that godforsaken row?” he growled.

“It’s Rap, sir.” his sergeant’s APC driver responded.

“It’s two rabid cats, high on acid, perched on a transmit switch and screwing, is what it is.”

“Weren’t you ever young sir?”

“Another remark like that one and I promise you that you’ll never get any older, soldier.”

Lt Stiles swung his feet down and as he did so Sergeant Jeffries, the first sergeant, arrived, clunking up the rear ramp and squeezing through a blackout of groundsheets.

“I think we’re being jammed sir.” He stated. “I checked everyone and no one’s fat ass is sat on a handset, or fooling around on one either.”

“Drop down to the alternative.” Stiles instructed.

“I tried that already, and battalion too, but it’s the same story.”

Franklin reached for the company’s other means, a telephone handset connected to DEL, the German emergency military phone network.

Since the construction of the Inner German Border, the ‘Iron Curtain’ of Winston Churchill’s famous speech in 1945, the nations of Western Europe had wisely undertaken the creation of an alternative telephone system for military use in time of war. It is sort of hard to keep that kind of thing from the general populace though. In the frequent exercises held during the Cold War when the various units needed to tie in on the DEL, finding the hidden access points could cause headaches for newbies. The solution was always to ask a local.

“Wo ist die geheimnis telefon
, where is the secret telephone?” would be the question to a passing Fräulein, farmer or Postbote.

“Where it always is, at the left side of the oak tree and dig down a half metre.”

Consequently it was not a secret from the Soviet Bloc intelligence services for very long.

The DEL handset was dead.

Whoever was jamming them needed a radio for each known channel, so there was a limit to what the enemy could achieve. The previous occupants of the location, 2RTR, had left behind a weirdly named DFC RANTS, the British version of their own communication equipment operating instructions, and he consulted it before changing his own sets channel to that of the
RMP traffic post to the west of them. Rap music blared out of the earpieces.

It was not inconceivable that they were the victim of random, though deliberate, interference with their radio transmissions but Mrs. Stiles
‘didn’t raise no fool’.

“Stand the company to, and occupy the fighting positions Sergeant.”

“No evidence of anyone moving out there sir, but you are dead right, better to be safe than sorry.” Sergeant Jeffries ducked back out the way he had come to pass the word verbally.

The company had had a hard war so far despite not having arrived until several weeks after the fighting had begun. Modern armoured warfare uses up machines quickly and they had found reserve equipment in both short supply and in need of several upgrades. The old Abrams had the same 80s generation technology as at the time of mothballing, in the vast tunnel complex at
Husterhoeh Kaserne.

C Company 2/198
th
was guarding this junction because the regiment had been pulled from the line in a pretty fought-out condition, as had other units of NATO’s armies, but each and every man and woman could hold their heads high and say with conviction
“If you think we look bad then you should see the other guy.”
  The ‘Other Guy’ was the Soviet’s Tenth Tank Army which had started off as a two corps, tank heavy and first rate unit with 770 MBTs and 209 AFVs. ‘10
th
Tank’ was now two battered divisions worth of exhausted leg infantry. The men had been passed back east, allegedly to rest and refit, but they were ordered to hand off their surviving tanks, AFVs and guns to other units instead. The command elements from battalion groups upwards had been trucked away by KGB troops for a ‘debrief ‘and were never heard of again.

Lieutenant Stiles and just one other were the only officers that the company had, and sergeants filled the other command slots.

With only three M1 Abrams, one of which suffered from an unreliable transmission, they had relieved an understrength squadron of the Royal Tank Regiment which was ‘rested’ after just forty eight hours out of the line. Its crews of comparative youngsters, each one of them with old men’s eyes, had not been that much different from themselves.

Franklin now heard the M1s, and ITV start up in their camouflage net enclosures and move toward hull-down fighting positions, of which there were plenty. The British had prepared this place for
defence by a tank company, not just one in name only.

The position was unoriginal inasmuch as it was recognized as a key defence point long before the time of Christ. The ancient routes that the autobahns now followed had required defence/taxation but the ground was flat at that point. According to local historians and archaeologists, the Hill fort that C Company occupied had been built from scratch, with hundreds of thousands of wicker baskets of spoil to create its height and dimensions. Time and the elements had reduced the hill to something less than its former glory and its wooden palisade had rotted away centuries ago, of course. The top of the fort was now flat and partially open to view, from the south in particular.

Those same historians had protested vigorously when the sappers and pioneers began laying the current new defences on top of the very, very old. They were set out in a triangular fashion, two hundred metres to a side with the corners at the south, east and west. There were no blocking positions to bar the way to an enemy motoring up to the junction, this was a hardpoint, an iron triangle, and from here they could engage targets approaching in any direction. An enemy had to deal with them all as a package, not in mutually supporting firing positions that could be quickly isolated by weight of numbers. Coils of barbed wire hindered the approach to the top by anyone on foot, and although laid with infantry in mind they had worked exceedingly well against protesters from the civilian population. Abandoned makeshift shelters, constructed of fertilizer bags and plastic sheeting for the most part, sat beside the foot of the fort where placards and protest banners decorated the steel barbs.