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

by Andy Farman

  Dopey’s heart pounded and it would have been so very easy to just stay where he was, put his shaking hands over his ears and resign to fear, but the firing slackened from that of a deafening roar to one of a few desultory shots in the dark.

  At times like this the good soldier does not grit his teeth and fight on for Queen and country, he does not risk his skin out of regimental pride either, what he does do though is to think of his mates and it is that spurs him out of safety and back into harm’s way.

  “SPIDER!” he waited for an answering shout.

  “SMOKE!” Dopey yelled.

  There was a pause until Spider judged that line of sight between the trench and the suspected firing point was sufficient.

  “GO!”

  Perhaps the sniper was now dead? But if not he was unlikely to have moved on as his last victim had emerged from this trench carrying ammunition boxes, so it was a potentially good source of targets.

  Dopey did not leave the trench the way he came in, he left the far end and rolled again, pausing only to check that the smoke was where it should be before slithering quickly downhill to where the boxes had landed.

  The smoke was thinning out by the time he had tossed the last one the remainder of the way to the gun pit and rejoined the rest of the crew.

  They were none of them regular soldiers, although Dopey Hemp had served a tour attached to The Queens Regiment in Iraq. They were all three of them part timers from Britain’s Territorial Army, a diverse mix in terms of background, education and employment in their day jobs, far more so than amongst the ranks of the regular army. ‘Dopey’s’ given name was Mark and he was a barman by trade, pulling pints in a pub in Dedworth on the outskirts of Windsor. He didn’t know what Spider Webber’s Christian name was, but Spider was a machinist somewhere on Slough Trading Estate. The gunner was Roger Goldsmith, a real estate agent from Eton Wick and young man lying dead in the trench behind them had been a college student in Maidenhead.

  Dopey and the others from 2 Wessex who were on loan to the Light Infantry were filling dead men’s shoes, and in their case manning one of the 2LI Machine Gun Platoon ‘gimpies’, the L7A2 General Purpose Machine Guns.

  The carefully recorded bearing and elevation sight settings were not written in Dopey’s hand and they did not ask what had happened to the light infantrymen who had been the original crew, the sandbags lining the gun pit were torn and ripped in places from an air bursting artillery round’s shrapnel, but the rain had washed away the blood.

  Now back in the gun pit the barrel of the GPMG glowed red, the rain hissed and sizzled on the metal but the fire mission in support of 1CG’s left flank company was complete.

  It is possible for the barrel of a GPMG to become white hot with constant use, and with that the barrel will warp and become unusable, but before that occurs then rounds will cook-off in the breach due to the heat. Three spare heavy barrels are part of an SF kit and carried in a thick woven bag of ’37 Pattern webbing, and it is but the work of a moment to replace a barrel that is glowing red orange with that of a spare.

  According to the SASC, the Small Arms School Corps, the hot barrel should be placed to one side and allowed to cool naturally in order to prevent the metal eventually becoming brittle. But at one side of the gun pit stood a 16” high aluminium storage tin that had once held twelve shermouli para illum tubes, it was now brimming with rainwater and had two heavy barrels for the ’gimpy’ sticking out of it. Had it not been raining and the locale arid, then the tin would have been filled with the crew’s urine and the pungent odour of a public urinal on a hot summer’s day would have hung in the air.

  A wonderful tool is a soldier’s urine; it has softened boot leather for centuries and cooled barrels since the invention of gunpowder.

  In a cramped shelter bay dug into the side of the gun pit Roger was working on the third barrel with a wire brush from the weapons cleaning kit, also a webbing bag. Carbon builds up rapidly in the SF role and if unchecked it will adversely effect accuracy as it fills the rifling grooves. The barrels gas regulator also collects carbon residue each time a round is fire and this eventually leads to stoppages.

  Having once cleaned the inside of the barrel Roger removed the gas regulator and carefully placed this, along with its two small semi-circular lugs into an old compo ration tin. He dropped them into two inches of clear fluid that was already in the tin where they fizzed. If the SASC frowned up the method of cooling the barrels that the Berkshire men employed, then they would be seriously upset with the regulator being immersed in rust remover. Nothing, however, removed carbon quite as quickly and thoroughly as an acid solution. The gunner was far more concerned with husbanding his limited supply of Jenolite than he was of the SASC’s wrath.

  The position had a field telephone with a direct line to a man-portable telephone exchange at company headquarters and he reported the death of their ammunition carrier to the D Company 2LI CSM.

  “What was his full name?” the CSM asked.

  “I dunno sir, his surname was Crowne.” Dopey replied, pausing to look at the other two, almost indiscernible in the dark.

  “Fucknows.” Spider offered unhelpfully, and Rogers shrug went unseen in the darkness at the back of the shelter bay.

  A few months ago they would all have been greatly embarrassed at not knowing the name of one of their unit who had been killed, but that was then and this was now.

  “He was a new guy…and we are down to six boxes of mixed link.”

  “And smoke!” Spider reminded him.

  The CSM could be heard calling out to the Q Bloke at the other end but the company’s quarter master sergeant’s reply was a mere nod. He was a busy man this day.

  Dopey hung up the old fashioned handset and sat beside Spider on empty ammunition boxes in the entrance to the shelter bay, their boots squelching in the mud with each movement as the boxes of 7.62 ball ammunition were opened.

  They were all deathly tired, and not just from lack of sleep. Fear produces adrenaline and adrenaline has a toll on the body but they squatted, silently creating fresh belts using spent links. There would be no tracer rounds in these belts so they would be carefully stored in the boxes the rounds had come from and placed with similar belts as their final ammunition reserve.

  “Anyone got any scoff?” Roger asked “Me stomach thinks me throats been cut.”

  Dopey fished out a small tin from a cardboard ten man ration pack beside him, tossing it across.

  Roger worked his compo tin opener industriously in the dark interior of the shelter bay before giving the contents an exploratory sniff.

  “Bacon Grill? What kind of grub is that for a good Jewish boy?” he grumbled “Hasn’t this man’s army heard of religious diversity?”

  There was the usual banter that went on between soldiers who lived in each pockets day in and day out. Complete irreverence towards each other’s religions, football teams, school and home towns. Only family was sacrosanct.

  At the end of the day nothing outside of their small circle was going to save them from harm, they had only each other and the absolute trust that came with that. Professional motivators are fond of stating “There is no ‘i’ in Team” but if they had consulted each member of the team they would realise their error.

  “I trust them, and I won’t betray their trust in me.”

  Roger tried to feign offence at a remark, but he failed and joined the other two soldiers giggling like demented schoolboys at the bad, and very old joke, before bending the newly removed lid of the tin slightly and using it to scoop the contents into his mouth, taking care not let his tongue touch its jagged edge.

  When Roger finished his cold, al fresco repast he stamped the empty tin and lid flat.

  “Stick a brew on Spider”

  “Bollocks…what did your last slave die of?”

  “Disobedience” Roger replied “and make mine three sugars, mate.”

  As handy as the pocket sized army issue solid fuel cookers were, the h
examine fuel gave off poisonous fumes in confined spaces so Spider pulled his camping gas stove from a bergan side pouch and set it up. Each man contributed their water bottles to the filling of the ‘kettle’, a circular L2 Frag grenade storage container. The lid and fastener kept soil and dirt out, and the heat in for quicker boiling.

  Roger fished the gas parts from out of the compo tin and grunted in pain as the rust remover attacked the tiny cuts on his fingertips that seem to appear as if by magic on infantrymen’s hands as soon as they get into the field. Roger’s discomfort was a minor thing, akin to getting lemon juice on a cut and the reassembly and reattachment of the gas regulator to the barrel went in silence.

  The newly field cleaned barrel replaced the old one, and a brief hiss sounded from the shermouli container that one was doused too.

  The white noise issuing from the radio headphones cut out abruptly.

  “Hello Four Six Delta this is Nine Four Bravo, over?”

  The trio paused in what they were doing.

  “Four Six Bravo, send, over.” replied Dopey.

  “Nine Four Bravo…shoot Delta Echo Three Six Echo, over!”

  “Here we go again.” muttered Roger.

  Bloodhound Zero Three, Germany: West of Bremen.

  2049hrs.

  Of the fleet of converted Boeing 707-300 airframes currently in service with the USAF, the one presently carrying the callsign Bloodhound Zero Three was the oldest of the JSTARS.

  Forty years before, it had taken to the air in the livery of Pan Am on the long-haul transatlantic routes, but it now wore pale grey as it traced its north/south race track route.

  Retired from commercial service some time before the sad demise of Pan Am she entered military service via a make-over at the, then, Grumman Aerospace facility. Since the end of the first Gulf War, or ‘Desert Sword’ to some, this old lady had sat in the dry desert heat in Nevada, just another retired airframe left out for spy satellites to count until this, the Third World War, necessitated a hurried refurbishment and installation of a surveillance suite several generations superior to the one previously carried.

  Tonight, high above a solid cover of rain heavy cloud Bloodhound Zero Three was watching events unfolded to the east.

  The Russian 77th Guards Tank Division had completed its awkward reverse course and the opposition had worn out two other divisions in keeping up the pressure so NATO could not exploit the situation. It had not all been for nothing, not all a complete waste as a minor breakthrough had occurred between two defending units, always a weak spot. Romanian tanks and AFVs from the 91st Tank Regiment were through that small breach before hard fighting by 3 Para, plus A and B Companies of 1 Wessex, had choked it off, battering the follow-on infantry.

  The Hungarians had smashed into the US and German sections on the Vormundberg, making some gains, only to lose them again in vicious hand to hand fighting as the Americans took back their fighting positions trench by trench, with grenades, bayonets and sheer guts. Once the last trench was retaken they poured fire into the former German positions, assisting their allies as they too fixed bayonets and counter attacked.

  Only in the sector held by the composite battalion of 82nd paratroopers and Coldstream Guardsmen did the enemy have a foothold and the Czechs of the 23rd Motor Rifle Regiment used that position to pry at the neighbouring 44 Commando, Royal Marines.

  Bloodhound Zero Three saw it all and reported each turn of events despite twice having to run from Red Air Force fighters.

  The NATO Air Forces were joined by carrier air groups and their brief was to get 4 Corps to the front, so only helicopter assets were on station where the ground fighting was taking place.

  It was SACEUR’s call, his decision. Did he allow the enemy to pound 4 Corps with their fighter bombers, or did he load up his own fighter bombers with air to air ordnance and use them as well as his remaining fighters in fully supporting the newly arrived US and Canadians in their drive to the front?

  If 4 Corps failed to arrive then the war in Europe was lost, and it had to get there before the blockage he had caused in the enemy supply line had been cleared.

  So as far as fixed wing air support went the front was on its own for the time being.

  General Allain could see that one of the two main dangers on the ground was the armour that had broken through and disappeared into the forested foothills south of the Vormundberg, was it now heading for the junction of Autobahn’s 2 and 39 to the east of Brunswick?

  He was not a man who held much reliance on computer aided digital maps and although there were a battery of plasma screens displaying all pertinent information, it was a paper map of Germany with a plastic overlay that he was studying and according to the grease pencil symbols, C Company, 2/198th Armored Regiment, a Mississippi National Guard unit, was defending it. Two tank platoons, an ITV, Improved Tow Vehicle, and a pair of M125 81mm mortar carriers were dug in covering the approaches. There was also an engineer section ready to drop the flyover if Vormundberg fell. Additionally there was a section of military policemen doing what MPs do, waving their arms at the traffic.

  The reality of the matter, however, was that one of those tank platoons was made up of elderly M1 Abrams MBTs from a prepositioned equipment depot, as their own rides had only arrived at Zeebrugge with 4 Corps.

  The M1 had much thinner armour than the M1A1 and was technologically its inferior on most other levels too, in addition being armed with a 105mm main gun, not the heavier 120mm.

  The second tank platoon was in the infantry role and as such under-strength in comparison to that of an infantry platoon.

  General Allain was about out of options and bereft an armoured reserve when he really needed one.

  In regard to the other matter, the divisional commander at Vormundberg had already informed SACEUR that he had wanted to pull out 44 Commando from their current location once they had thoroughly mined and booby trapped each position. They would then carry out a reorganisation on the hurry-up before going into the dead ground behind the forward companies of 2 Wessex, in readiness for a counterattack. General Allain had been doubtful as to the wisdom of the proposed action, the guardsmen and paratroopers had been in the line since the beginning, and they were about used up. The marines of 44 Commando were fresher, so why not carry out a relief-in-place? They had some artillery to spare that could provide a limited covering barrage whilst the maneouvre was carried out?

  “Grudge match…and I want that artillery for the Czechs when they are out in the open, not to keep their heads down.” was the divisional commander’s reply.

  Both the guardsmen and the marine commandos had a score to settle with the Czechs of the 23rd MRR.

  “Those Geordies and Yorkshiremen want payback for what those Czechs did to the prisoners and wounded at Wesernitz, and Forty Four were watching when those guys did the same to 42 Commando.”

  Major General Dave Hesher had been Brigadier General Hesher and commanding the US 4th Armored Brigade twenty four hours before, now he was commanding a division thrown together with such haste no one had found time to even give it a name or number.

  Despite his recent command of an armoured unit Dave Hesher had spent most of his service in the Rangers and Green Berets; he knew the value of unit pride when the odds were stacked against you. Attachments over the years to British units such as the Gloucester Regiment and Royal Welsh Fusiliers had brought home the value of joining your regional regiment for life rather than being posted to different ones every few years. Only the Airborne had anything like a similar setup in the US Army.

  The Canadian had been silent for a long moment as he considered the words.

  “The Czechs outnumber them, Dave.”

  “Sir, the 23rd were a full strength motor rifle regiment at the Wesernitz…”

  “A motor rifle regiment is equivalent to one of our infantry brigades, as you well know.” interrupted General Allain. “Together, the Coldstreamers and Commandos make a superannuated battalion…hell Dave, I combin
ed what was left of two Brit mech’ brigades and together there’s still barely more than three grand’s worth of them on their bit of that hill.”

  “There are Jim Popham’s boys too sir, 1CG and his guys are joined at the hip.” It was a desperate shot as even with those three units combined they were still outgunned, but Dave Hesher was betting that the Czechs were about to try and build on their earlier success and he wanted to kick them in the balls and regain the lost ground at the same time. He believed the amity, the brotherhood that had built up between American paratroopers and British guardsmen, if combined with the enmity the guardsmen and marines had for the Czech 23rd, would compensate for lack of numbers.

  Pierre Allain had been the one who had originally ordered the remnants of the battalion of the 82nd that had fought its way out of Leipzig Airport, and the half strength Guards battalion to combine. It had been geography and circumstance that had made the temporary arrangement a logical one at the time, it had been expeditious and Pierre had not envisaged the odd union lasting beyond the time it took to re-establish NATOs defensive line.

  The last he had heard was that troops in both units had exchanged items of uniform and kit so that now, not unlike two soccer teams at the final whistle, the paratrooper from Washington, Illinois was indistinguishable from the guardsman from Washington, Tyne and Wear, unless they spoke of course.

  The odd union had lasted months.

  Pierre Allain was not one to change a winning team before the cup final.

  “The 23rd have been quiet for an hour now.” Major General Hesher had said. “I’m betting that around midnight they’ll try again and I have dedicated two batteries of 105s and two flights of AH-64s, fuelled, armed and on standby.”

  “Alright then, it’s your battle so I won’t interfere.” SACEUR had allowed. “I can’t spare MLRS but I can get you a few extra rotary assets from the Danes.” In the early evening a half dozen Lynx from Eskadrille 723 had arrived unexpectedly in company with two Sea Kings loaded down with TOW reloads. General Allain had not asked any awkward questions but had authorised their attachment to the Italian army’s Agusta 129s operating out of forest clearings in the Herbst Wald. They both used TOW rather than Hellfire missiles anyway.