by Ralph Peters
Roshchin called again. This time his voice was marginally more rational. “They’re behind us,” he cried. “I have enemy tanks to my rear.”
“We’re behind them, you stupid fuck,” Bezarin called back. “Just shoot.”
Kikerin, the driver, set the tank back in motion, throwing Bezarin off balance. As soon as he recovered, he tried to piece his unit back together over the radio.
“One, where the hell are you?”
“Can’t talk,” Voronich answered. He sounded out of breath. “We’re fighting it out with an entire company. I think they lost their way in the smoke.”
All right. At least Voronich was fighting. “Volga Three, this is Ladoga Five.” No answer. Bezarin wondered if he had squandered an entire company, and his best company, at that, by sending them around the spur. He ordered his driver to head for a copse of trees that sat slightly higher than the tank’s present location. As the vehicle moved Bezarin watched the treeline warily.
A British armored personnel carrier bolted from the grove like a flushed rabbit. Kikerin knew enough to stop the tank, and the gunner already had the target in his sights.
“Fire.”
The British troop carrier exploded in a spectacular bloom of flame.
“Get in against the trees and halt,” Bezarin ordered. He had lost control of his battalion in the smoke and the fighting. But he did not see how he could have done otherwise. Now he could only hope and gather what remained of his battalion to him. He did not even know for certain who was winning. If the radio net was to be believed, the fight had been a disaster. Yet here he was, on the high ground atop the broad ridge, with a trail of destroyed British vehicles to his rear. It was hard to make sense of it. At any rate, there was a perceptible change in the level of combat in the immediate area. A pocket of quiet seemed to have grown up around his tank.
He tried again to contact Dagliev, hoping that his position on the high ground would make a difference.
“Volga Three, this is Ladoga Five. What is your situation?”
Dagliev replied as promptly and as clearly as if he had never been away. “This is Three. I’m behind them. Clean. Killing them one after another as they pull off. It’s just like firing on the range.”
“Your losses?”
“None. They never saw us coming. They must’ve been totally fixed on the smoke and what was going on in front of them. We ran right through their artillery batteries.”
“Good. Wonderful. When you’re done at your current location, I want you to sweep back to the east toward me. Close the trap completely. I’m up on the high ground. Just watch what you’re shooting at as you close.”
So perhaps things were not so bad after all. Bezarin felt a tremendous satisfaction in having sent Dagliev around the enemy’s flank.
“Volga One, this is Ladoga Five. Situation?”
“Wait. Load sabot. I’m still in the shit, but it looks about even.”
“Are you all right?” Bezarin was surprised at his good luck, after all.
“Yes. All right. But Roshchin’s gone. Now. Fire. I saw his tank go up. Catastrophic kill. I watched the last of his company go. In seconds. They came out of the smoke at an angle, driving right up between my tanks and the British. It was a matter of seconds.”
So. Perhaps, Bezarin thought, wishes had a dark, unforgiving power. But he could not let himself think about that now.
“All right,” Bezarin called. “Just stay off the crest of the ridge. Three’s coming in behind them now.”
“I heard the transmission.”
“Good luck.” Bezarin switched over to the regimental net.
“Ural Five, this is Ladoga Five.”
Silence. Then a bit of faint, eerie music.
“Kuban Five, this is Ladoga Five.”
“Target, left,” Bezarin’s gunner screamed.
“Hold it, that’s one of ours,” Bezarin said. He tried the microphone again.
“Kuban Five, this is Ladoga Five.”
No response. Where was everybody?
Bezarin angrily unlatched his hatch cover and shoved it up hard. Unreasonably, he felt that if he were out in the open air, he would have a better chance of reaching someone.
“Comrade Commander,” the gunner called, trying to stop him.
Bezarin ignored the tug on his overalls. The air, laden with the acrid residue of the artillery barrage, of the smoke and the tank fight, was nonetheless marvelously fresh after the poisonous fumes in the interior of the tank. The noise of battle was still there, but at a reduced volume. Then Bezarin noticed the huge black scar on the side of the turret. There was a break in the reactive armor plating that gave the appearance of a section of mouth where teeth had been knocked out. Bezarin suddenly remembered the tremendous jolt that had shaken the tank early in the fight. It made him feel weak in the bottom of his belly to realize how close he had come to dying.
Bezarin was startled a second time by the appearance of Voronich’s tank leading five others up the hillside behind him. Several of these tanks also bore visible scars where the reactive armor had saved them.
Shaking his head, Bezarin pressed the microphone closer to his lips. “Volga One, this is Ladoga Five. Put your tanks in the woodline just below my position. Cover the saddle you just worked up and the crest to the north.” Six tanks, Bezarin thought, plus his own. Seven. And Dagliev had reported no losses at the time of his last transmission.
Roshchin was gone. And it sounded like the greater part of his company had gone with him. But Bezarin hoped that a few of them, at least, would show up alive and well as the last smoke dissipated.
Bezarin called Dagliev. “Three, what’s your current position?”
At first, there was no response. Bezarin was just about to try a second call when Dagliev responded.
“This is Three. I can’t talk now. I’m in it hot.”
Bezarin’s newfound confidence began to dissolve.
“Three, where are you? I’ve got seven tanks up here. I’ll come to you.”
“It’s all right,” Dagliev answered. He sounded annoyed at the suggestion that he needed help. “We’re just shooting as fast as we can. We caught their reserve right in its ass end.”
“One, this is Ladoga. Prepare to move.”
“Acknowledged.”
Bezarin knew that they had the British now. He wanted to finish the job. But he was worried at the complete silence on the regimental net.
“Ural, Kuban, this is Ladoga. Can you hear me?”
“Ladoga, this is Beechtree. I hear you clearly.”
Bezarin had no idea who Beechtree was. He tried again.
“Ural, Kuban, this is Ladoga. What is your situation?”
“This is Beechtree,” the unidentified station insisted. “Regimental artillery. The attack has failed; it’s all over. Air and fire strikes hit Kuban as he was moving up. Ural never reached the British positions. All of the battalions are destroyed. It’s all over.”
“Like hell,” Bezarin said. “We’re in behind them. They’ve pulled off the southern portion of the ridge. We have their positions. Now we’re going to roll them up from south to north. Can you support us?”
The net was silent. Then:
“Ladoga, this is Nevsky Ten. Do you hear my transmission?”
The transmitter was clearly very powerful. Whoever Nevsky Ten was, his voice dominated the static and distant stations on the net.
“I hear your transmission,” Bezarin said.
“Execute your decision,” the godlike voice commanded. “We will support you. Antitank helicopters are closing from the north at this time. You roll up the British from the south. Be prepared to mark your positions with flares. I will stay on this net. If you have any problems, call me immediately. Stop. Beechtree, answer your vertical net. But priority of fires is to Ladoga, is that clear?”
Bezarin no longer had any doubt about the identity of Nevsky Ten. It was Major General Duzov, the division commander.
The Britis
h were in a trap. Bezarin turned his tanks northward behind the last line of enemy positions as smoothly as in a demonstration for visiting dignitaries, working up along a broken plateau atop the high ground. He felt as though he was absolutely in control. Most of the targets were infantry fighting vehicles and transporters now, with few tanks in evidence. Bezarin concluded that the British had run out of antitank ammunition, since they so often failed to return fire effectively. Their surprised vehicles scurried about like mice surrounded by cats. As Bezarin’s armor overran one of the positions a British soldier emptied his rifle at the command tank, then charged the forty-ton vehicle, swinging his empty weapon as a club. Bezarin cut the man in half with machine-gun fire.
The last of the smoke disappeared, and Bezarin’s tankers fought under blue skies. The Soviet tanks halted along the cleared ridge, pursuing the fleeing enemy with their fires. The long slope up which Bezarin’s sister battalion had attacked presented a chilling testament as to what could happen when a hasty attack became so rushed that it degenerated into recklessness. Most of the battalion’s vehicles sat inertly or burned, sending pillars of dark smoke heavenward. The encounter had been devastating for both sides, overall. The British had killed, and then they had been killed. The combination of Bezarin’s sweep and the converging attack helicopters had turned the tide. Bezarin switched his attention to rallying what remained of his battalion and the survivors of First Battalion’s debacle.
Stray vehicles gathered around Bezarin’s position. Leaderless, the disoriented crews’ general confusion was evident in their tendency to draw too close to one another, as if for protection by virtue of proximity, and in the slackness of their behavior. Vehicles simply halted in the open in the middle of the seized positions, their crews convinced that the work had been done and that they could relax. The tautness of battle ebbed dangerously now.
Bezarin acted quickly. He had not forgotten the forward detachment mission, and he did not want to be deprived of the opportunity to lead his tanks into the enemy’s rear ahead of everyone else. He ordered Dagliev to take one platoon of motorized riflemen along with his tanks and push on northwest toward Hildesheim, clearing the road. Then he organized every stray tank he could locate that remained in running order into a heavy company under Voronich, his remaining company commander. His rear-services officer provided a pleasant surprise by appearing on the scene before the last tanks had stopped firing. The rear-services captain, an especially preachy communist who was laughably naive about much of the corruption in the regiment’s rear services, had come through, living up to all of the hollow-sounding phrases about the need for good communists to take the initiative. A representative from Beechtree, the regimental artillery commander, came up as well, maneuvering warily in his artillery command and reconnaissance vehicle. It was a captain, a battery commander. His guns were ready to move out and follow Bezarin. Evidently, the division commander’s directives to Beechtree had shocked him into action.
Bezarin delayed calling Nevsky Ten until he felt he had assembled a sufficient, if lean, grouping that could act as a forward detachment. He personally dashed among the congregating vehicles, insuring that they moved to the correct radio frequencies and ordering them into local positions that provided at least partial protection from ground and aerial observation. The clear sky showed webs of jet trails, and Bezarin felt it was only a matter of time before the enemy would attempt to strike back. The best of his tankers had quickly learned new priorities now, and they hurried to restock their on-board units of fire from the limited quantities brought forward on the battalion’s trucks. Bezarin urged them to hurry, convinced that time was pressing, that the afternoon was waning. When he finally glanced at his watch, he was amazed to find that it was not yet ten in the morning.
As Bezarin remounted his own tank the gunner told him that Nevsky Ten had been calling.
Bezarin was horrified. “Why didn’t you come and get me?”
The gunner shrugged. He was a gunner. Command communications were not part of his responsibilities.
Bezarin hastily pulled on his headpiece. “Nevsky Ten, this is Ladoga Five.”
Major General Duzov responded quickly. “This is Nevsky Ten. What’s your situation?”
“We’ve cleared the ridge. I’ve formed a grouping by combining my battalion with the remnants of First Battalion. Overall strength, battalion-minus of tanks, with one motorized rifle company attached and a battery of guns moving to join us. We are prepared to act as a forward detachment. I’ve already dispatched a reinforced tank company to clear the approach route in the Hildesheim tactical direction.”
Bezarin’s body tensed in anticipation. He wanted this mission. He wanted to lead. He had tasted blood, and he liked it. He felt as though he could take on anything the British had to offer. His battalion had earned the right to be the first to reach the Weser River.
“This is Nevsky Ten. Do you have a clear understanding of the mission? Do not respond with details in the clear. Just yes or no.”
“Yes. I understand. We’re ready.” Bezarin knew this was a slight exaggeration. It would be at least ten to fifteen minutes before he could get everyone back aboard their vehicles and organized into march order.
“All right. Do you have any long-range means of communications with you?”
Bezarin thought hard. What he needed was a regimental command tank or vehicle.
“This is Ladoga Five. I have a special artillery vehicle with me. I can use the artillery long-range set, if necessary.”
“Good. Get your vehicles on the road. And whatever you do, keep moving. We will all be behind you.”
The gravity in the commander’s voice, and his simple choice of words, moved Bezarin. He switched over to his battalion radio net, anxious to send out the words that would set them all in motion. He knew that his tanks needed more time to resupply, that the stray vehicles had not been sufficiently integrated into the grouping to do much beyond merely following the vehicle to their immediate front. But he knew that now, with a great hole punched through the last line of the enemy’s defense, time was the dominant factor. He felt simultaneously elated and half-wild with small, cloying frustrations. He worked his radio in a fierce, uncompromising voice that had matured in the space of a morning. Major Bezarin wanted to move.
Seventeen
The morning mist floated off the Weser, blending with the slow-moving darker smoke from the burning buildings. Gordunov sat concealed on the bank, alone, allowing himself a brief rest, fighting against his body to maintain the strength to lead. He had expected an assault at first light, but the dirty air had been growing paler for an hour, and still the only sign of hostility was the occasional rattle of a spooked rifleman or machine gunner in an outlying position. Communications checks with the network of observation posts returned only reports of vehicle noises back in the hills. Gordunov could not understand the delay. The reduced visibility provided by the mist and smoke offered perfect cover for an attacker. Later, after the mist burned off, an assault would have a much tougher time of it. Gordunov could feel the change in the weather. The last of the rain had sputtered out during the night, and the day would be warm and clear.
He was certain of one other thing, too. There would be little mercy shown on either side. As he’d made his tour of the perimeter in the first light he had been startled by the number of dead civilians in the Hameln streets. House fires had obviously driven them from their hiding places right into the midst of the fighting. In the night, they would have been impossible to distinguish from combatants. Dark running forms. A foreign language. Both sides would have shot them down. But Gordunov understood the psychology of the situation. The blame would fall solely on his men. When the enemy returned, they would see only the victims. They would not pause to consider that their own fires might have been as much at fault as Soviet weapons. And they would not be inclined to take prisoners. His men would get the message quickly enough.
So be it.
In many ways, so
many ways, this was a totally different war from the lost war in Afghanistan. You rarely had such a heavy morning damp, or such thick mist off slow rivers. In high Asia, the air was thin, and the mountain torrents plunged through impassable gorges down into ruined valleys. You did not have so sturdy an urban area as this outside of Kabul itself. But haunting similarities remained. As a brand-new, unblooded officer, just off the troop rotation plane with the first windblown grit in his eyes and teeth, he had been garrisoned at Bagram, where the new airborne leaders learned the ropes. A priority then had been reopening the road to Kandahar. The Afghan forces failed, as always, and Soviet forces received the order to do the job. Gordunov commanded a company in a battalion equipped with airborne-variant infantry fighting vehicles. They road-marched south, a small part of a much larger operation, nervously awaiting an ambush that failed to materialize. Gordunov had not tasted combat directly that time. But he got his first look at war up close.
The column halted in a ruined village, whose dirt streets were littered with fly-covered carcasses. At first, he had only recognized the dead animals, large and obvious. Then he realized that the clumps of rags lying about were human bodies. Scavengers circled overhead, like gunships awaiting targets. The column idled in the stench and the heat, anxious for orders that would call them to support a combat operation ongoing in the next valley. But vehicles began to cook over, and still no word came. Gordunov dismounted to relieve himself, and he walked a few meters away from the column, hunting a place where the flies would not hurry off a nearby corpse and attack him before he could finish his business. He turned into an alley between two ruptured mud buildings. And he faced a carpet of human bodies, butchered until they were stacked three corpses high. The alley was at least fifteen meters long and perhaps a meter and a half wide. It ended bluntly against a masonry wall. The natives had been driven into the enclosure, then methodically murdered. Now they lay turning to leather in the sun. A few pillaging birds lazily lifted away at the sight of Gordunov, unsure of what he portended but too bloated to hasten. A fly pinched Gordunov’s cheek. He batted wildly at his face, gagging at the thought of some strange and hopeless infection. He struggled to master his insides just as a hand seized his slung weapon from behind.