Fellows had slowed the unit two hundred meters from the ruins of the small village of Almke when they came under fire. The first indication was the explosion of the second in line of the SAS APCs. In open ground a little to the rear of the Scimitars, it burst into flames, swerved to the left and overturned. Sandy Roxforth, in station sixty meters to the right of the APC, had been standing in his Scimitar with his head and shoulders out of the hatch. The attack was unexpected, accurate identification was difficult at night and Soviet troops would be taking care not to fire on their own armour.
Roxforth dropped into the vehicle and as he did so heard machine gun bullets rattling off the aluminium hull. The lieutenant had just sufficient time to realize its significance when a 120mm shell, its point-blank range confirmed by the ranging machine gun, penetrated the Scimitar hull just below the top run of the track and exploded directly behind the driver.
Sache-Worrel saw Roxforth’s tank destroyed. The way in which it blew to pieces was terrifying, and he realized instantly there was no possibility of survivors. He was praying for someone to break radio silence and tell him what he should do. It seemed sensible to use best speed to get out of the immediate area of the village and away into the darkness; at fifty miles an hour it didn’t take long to get a Scimitar out of trouble. But Captain Fellows, to Sache-Worrel’s right and eighty meters ahead of him, had not changed course and appeared to have stopped.
Sache-Worrel saw a burst of flame from Fellows’ Rarden; a single shot, then two in rapid succession. He was getting too close to Captain Fellows’ tank so ordered his driver to swing away further to the right and increase speed, intending to draw around in an arc beyond the leading Scimitar.
Fellows’ Rarden fired a three-round burst, then his Scimitar accelerated. The captain had left it a fraction of a second too late. A shell exploded beneath the tank’s square stern, lifted the hull upwards and threw it completely on to its side. It ignited immediately, its fuel spreading around it so it appeared to be floating in a lake of flames. Sache-Worrel caught a horrifying glimpse of a small dark figure staggering within the incinerating fire, then heard Gunion on the net, his voice urgent.
‘Magpie Sierra Echo… this is Ben… three o’clock, woods,… go like hell!’
‘Wilco…’ He felt the Scimitar surge across the ground as his driver swung it away.
‘Magpie Sierra Delta… this is X-Ray Nine… we’re going in to neutralize.’ It was Hinton.
‘Roger X-Ray Nine, we’ll stand off.’
The net was silent again for several minutes. Sache-Worrel brought the Scimitar around two thousand meters beyond the village, and waited.
‘Magpie Sierra Delta this is X-Ray Nine. It’s okay here now.’
‘Roger X-Ray Nine, out to you. Magpie Sierra Echo… white farm building four kilometers back… small lake… rendezvous there.’
‘Roger Magpie Sierra Delta.’
The HF died. Sache-Worrel was stunned by the happenings of the past few minutes. Half the SAS unit wiped out… and two Scimitar crews… Sandy Roxforth… Captain Fellows… all in seconds. A body thrashing in the petrol fire, Fellows’ or his gunner’s? There was no slow introduction to war and death, one moment it was peace and the next all hell had broken loose around you. And he had not even seen the enemy although he had kept his eyes to the L2A1… Fellows must have spotted them though, he had managed several shots with the Rarden.
McLeod the gunner shouted by Sache-Worrel’s right shoulder, ‘We hit the shit, sir… bloody shame!’
Hit the shit! That was understatement thought Sache-Worrel. Everything had gone wrong since the moment they left the bunker! He could see the farmhouse ahead of them now. Before when they had passed it the ruins had looked serene in the darkness, and the carp lake bordering its grounds had appeared calm and peaceful. Now he wasn’t sure; it might hold an enemy gun… death… nothing would be as it seemed for him ever again. At least, not in war.
Gunion had stayed with the remaining APC, and then escorted it back. The vehicle was now in the shadow beside the tumbled farm building, and the men were stationed in the rubble. The two Scimitars were parked in what had been the farm’s orchard and a carpet of apples covered the ground.
Hinton was angrily discussing the tragedy. ‘It was a Leopard! A bloody Heer Leopard. Hull-down in the wreckage of a supermarket.’
A Leopard! Good God, thought Sache-Worrel, we lost all our men to a NATO tank. Is war all mistakes? It was beginning to look like it.
‘You sure it was a NATO crew?’ asked Gunion. ‘It might have been captured!’
‘It should have been bloody captured,’ growled Hinton disgustedly. ‘It would have been better for us. I lost eleven men, good men… you’ve lost six… every one dead.’
‘Who were the Leopard crew?’
‘There was a 7th German Armoured Division flash on the back of the tank,’ said Hinton. ‘And what I could see of their equipment afterwards was all West German.’
‘What did they say when you told them we were British?’ asked Sache-Worrel.
‘I’m afraid we didn’t have time for a conversation. They were fighting with the commander’s hatch wedged partly open… we dropped them a message and shut the hatch.’
‘A message?’
‘A British ordinance mark on a grenade!’
The second transmission from HQ, due to be made at 02.23 hours, did not materialize. Again the men experienced the now familiar feelings of uncertainty. Had the radio message been transmitted an hour earlier than they had expected? Would it be transmitted an hour later? The message was supposed to give a new target for the unit. But even more important, it was a form of contact with their comrades. Gunion had decided against any further attempt to pursue the first target of the Soviet Division’s HQ, by now they would probably have been moved, and there was less than four hours until dawn. He didn’t want the last two Scimitars caught in the centre of the main Russian troop movements in broad daylight.
The SAS were free to operate as an independent unit after the first night, and Hinton had already explained his plans. He intended to abandon the APC and work on foot. Men were easier to conceal than vehicles, and he would travel for the remainder of darkness into the sector occupied by the Soviet logistics column and operate there. He had a potential rendezvous with a Bundesgrenzshutz unit in forty-eight hours, and would link up with them if they still existed. Supply points of additional weapons and explosives were already available to him when he needed them, and he would be organizing a guerrilla force.
Hinton could make it all sound so casual and easy, thought Sache-Worrel. The man was much harder than himself, brutal in his attitude even to friends, though there weren’t more than three of four years’ difference in their ages. Listening to him made Sache-Worrel feel like a new boy at prep’ school.
He realized now that everything he had ever done in his military training had only been a game. Of course it had been tough and essential… the best that could be given to the officers and men. But behind every training action was the knowledge that someone somewhere was giving the orders and knew what they were doing; within a very few hours you were always clean, warm, and ensconced back in the comfort of the mess with your friends, laughing over a few gin and tonics. And in the background were your families, girlfriends, wives, keeping the whole thing in perspective.
Ireland? It had felt dangerous at the time, but it had been a pushover; border patrols in the open countryside south of Armagh, and the faintly hostile attitude of the people, which you knew was seldom genuine but enforced by the IRA activity in the area. In resrospect, the former tour of duty seemed like a holiday.
He remembered a conversation with his father a few days before he had left for Ireland. ‘Don’t try to be a hero,’ his father had said.
He had laughed at the well-meant advice which was almost a cliche. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. Don’t look for the opportunity. Heroes have a tendency
not to survive.’
‘It’s not a war, Dad.’
‘It’s active service, and the nearest thing to a war you may ever have to fight. Don’t be tempted to use your tour of duty to test your courage. That’s not its purpose.’
‘Things have changed in the army, Dad. It’s a lot more organized than in your day; modern communications are very sophisticated… satellites, advanced radio techniques. We have computers… we just feed in the information, and the instruments come up with the answers. Our intelligence is first-class… radar… infra-red detectors… electronic sensors… we know every move an enemy can make. It’s all very organized and technical. About the only decision I have to make, is when to clean my teeth.’
Everything had seemed so neat and orderly. Then. Clean smart uniforms, instructors who fed you their information lucidly and with assurance, orders given and immediately obeyed.
‘This is a Scimitar.’ The usual army practice of treating everyone in training, even young officers, as complete idiots. ‘Welded aluminium construction. Fast, light and manoeuvrable. Pretty, gentlemen, very pretty. First-class reconnaissance vehicle. Crew three. Length 4.743 meters, width 2.184 meters, height 2.115 meters. Maximum road speed eighty-seven kilometers an hour. Range, six hundred and forty-four kilometers. It will climb a vertical object of half a meter, or a trench two meters wide. No nasty habits, well-bred, and a little on the fancy side. A nice smart charger for a Lancer gentleman. Treat her right, and she’ll look after you. And what appears to be a punt-gun on her turret, is a Rarden cannon; ninety to a hundred rounds a minute. Single shots, or bursts of up to six rounds. Case ejected outside the vehicle, so they don’t scrape the burnish off your toecaps. Interesting ammunition, the round doesn’t arm until it is twenty meters from your barrel, and if it doesn’t hit the target in eight seconds, blows itself to pieces. Very convenient… tidy. You are going to learn everything about it, gentlemen, and I am going to teach you.’
‘This is your ammunition: TP; TP-T; MINE HEI-T; SAPHEI, APIC-T.’
‘A Helmgard helmet, Mister Sache-Worrel. And what is it fitted with? Accoustic valves to protect your delicate eardrums! And what else? Right! Your communications facilities. And these are part of…? Yes, Clansman… your communications system. Eight hundred and forty channels available, gentlemen; HF and VHF; frequency coverage from one point five to seventy-five point nine seven five MHz, and two hundred and twenty-five to three hundred and ninety-nine point zero MHz.’
‘This gentlemen, is the ZB 298 battlefield surveillance radar, which can be fitted to reconnaissance vehicles… the thermal imaging sight… lasar range-finder… the night vision gunner’s sight… you need to know about mines, gentlemen; this is a film of the Ranger mine discharger system; the discharger holds one thousand two hundred and ninety-six mines in one load, and can fire out eighteen mines a second… bar mines are laid by ploughs; seven hundred an hour… note the angles of your smoke grenade dischargers; a full hundred and eighty degree smoke screen… gentlemen, this is not a cage for the display of baboons, though I sometimes wonder, this is the Morfax gunnery simulator…’
So much information, but still confusion…
Would his father have been confused, too, wondered Sache-Worrel? His own war had lasted less than twenty-four hours and he had no idea what was happening. His father’s war had lasted five years. Could doubt and uncertainty last that long, or was it eventually overcome? And fear? War had not really begun for him yet… it was early days… hours… and yet he had already been terrified. He had seen death at a distance but not yet touched it. He realized how condescending he must have sounded to his father… wars were all the same. You might fight them with different weapons, in different places, but they were the same.
‘Robin…’
‘Yes, Ben.’
‘I think we should try and make ourselves useful. Hinton’s moving out now. We’ll head back towards the west and have a go at the Ruskie engineering units; create a bit of mayhem with their soft-skinned transports. Strike, cut and run, keep on the move. Are you game?’
Sache-Worrel nodded. ‘Yes, I’m game.’ What was it Mister Hatton his schoolmaster used to say? Don’t think you’ve lost, just because you’re fifteen points down at half time; you can still win.
SEVENTEEN
It was different now, thought Morgan Davis; working better. The battle groups were holding the Russians! The minefields on the eastern bank of the River Schunter had been carefully laid with plenty of depth. The NATO gunners, covering it from well to the rear of the armour, had wiped out the first of the Soviet recce squadrons with a spectacular copy-book strike.
A large number of sensors, still operative deep in the ground through which the Soviet division was attempting to move, were feeding information back to the artillery observers and continuously giving them new targets. Unfortunately, in many cases, blanketing the area where an electronic sensor detected and reported transport movement also meant the destruction of the device. But nevertheless they were proving effective. The Soviet division had for the moment lost its momentum; the head of the attack had weakened.
Warrant Officer Davis still knew little of the progress of the war outside the Elm Sector. He had heard rumours that the Russian forces had captured Lübeck and Hamburg in the north, and the Americans in CENTAG, supported by the French and German corps, had pushed the invaders back into East Germany as far as the town of Nordhausen. He realized however, the stories were unlikely to be fact, as he felt certain the NATO forces would not be permitted to advance into Warsaw Pact territory. Everyone was guessing, and those with the most fertile imaginations guessed the wildest. Stones grew in wartime, and everyone liked to think they knew something special or had experienced something unique; like the Angel of Mons. Angel of bloody Mons. Christ, we could do with one here, he mused. But the Angel of Mons had been only imagination, too… no’ one had even mentioned one until years after the First World War when some London journalist wrote a fictional short story about the battle and the intervention of a host of Heavenly warriors; then everyone remembered — or thought they did The Russians in Hamburg? They might well get there eventually, but by God they would have had to shift to be in the city by now. Hedda and the kids? They’d be okay. Hedda would see to that. Bloody good bird, Hedda. Bird? Lady. Warrant officers’ wives weren’t birds. And the kids, too. They were nearly officer’s kids now. And he wouldn’t be spading the rest of his army career as a warrant officer, there would certainly be more promotion ahead… a commission to lieutenant… captain… major? Christ, it was impossible. Hedda the wife of a British major, hell, she would lap it up. It would be great for them all.
There had been a lull for the past half hour, following a rocket barrage that passed beyond Charlie Squadron’s present positions, and landed harmlessly in open farmland There was still artillery fire from both sides, but it all seemed to be aimed behind the front lines. There was nothing to be seen moving in the vision-intensifying lenses… the Russians were somewhere in the darkness… they were there… but they weren’t coming right now.
There was a ripple of movement in the ground and the sky far across the Schunter glowed briefly.
‘There’s another, Sarge… sir,’ said Inkester. He was still having problems remembering Davis’s new rank. ‘What you reckon they are?
‘Lance missiles.’ Damn, thought Davis, I’ve joined the guessing game!
‘Hell of a warhead, sir! Did you see them SPs go in a while back? Glad I wasn’t on the receiving end. Bloody hell, it’s like fucking bonfire night a million times over. Wish I knew what was going on though.’ He raised his voice. ‘Here, DeeJay, you bleedin’ awake?
‘Yeah…’ DeeJay’s voice was muffled, hollow.
‘You want an egg banjo?’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I’ve got one… got two. Put ’em in me pocket, back at the reform.’
‘Christ, a bloody cold egg banjo!’
‘They ain’t cold. You want one?�
�
‘Stick it!’
‘What about you, sir?’
‘No thanks,’ answered Davis. He could imagine it, slimy in his mouth, the fried egg sandwich covered in oily thumbprints. He sighed, it would be dawn soon. Another dawn; it had to be better than the last one. Just twenty-four hours, and everything had changed. What would happen next? What were the bloody government doing? Talking! The government always talked, and usually ended by cutting back on defence funding. Well, they’d soon know if they’d cut their bloody budgets too hard; they probably knew now. A couple of thousand more battle tanks along the frontier would certainly have helped matters. How many had been lost? God, it must be hundreds already. ‘Spink?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Knock us out some char.’
‘Yeah, earn your bloody living,’ called Inkester.
‘Give the lad a chance. How’re you feeling now, Spink?’
‘A bit better, sir.’
‘You don’t smell better,’ said Inkester. ‘You’re like a big tart, pissing yourself when a gun goes off. They ought to lave issued you with a nappy…’
‘Inkester, shut up! One more remark like that and you’re on a fizzer. I mean it, lad.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Inkester decided to think of something else; something pleasant. What was the name of that bird he had met in Bergen, in Angie’s Bar? Irma The same as the one in the film… the musical… bloody bore that was… Had her didn’t I, the night we were celebrating Weeksie’s promotion; she wanted a Length Irma did, and she got it in the back of Weeksie’s Volks! Wonder what happened to that? It wasn’t a bad jam-jar. Nicked by now, or bloody full of shrapnel holes. Gone the same fucking way as my stereo, and all the tapes… and my civvy gear. Wonder if they’ll pay us compensation; bloody should, we didn’t start the fucking war.
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