by Andy Farman
In addition to the gun groups there were two light anti-tank teams also, provided by 13 and 14 Platoons of D Company, 1 Wessex, and these covered the approaching traffic from the east and west, dug into the grassy verge beside the roadway whilst the two platoons had the additional tasks of covering the north/south running expressway.
The towpaths beside the canal had sappers from 25 Engineer Regiment RE dug in there in the infantry role to prevent any interference with their demolition charges, charges set in prefabricated bore holes that were set to drop a long section of the autobahn into the canal if called upon.
Post war construction and reconstruction in the former West Germany had been undertaken with defence in mind, for instance most of the bridges across the major rivers which had been destroyed by the advancing allies’ air forces or the retreating Wehrmacht were never rebuilt, and those that had been were designed to be demolition friendly.
Along the canal to the south lay three other bridges but all quite narrow, a footbridge and two side by side single lane structures which had once upon a time carried rail tracks serving a small barge port, south of the autobahn bridge. 15 Platoon were guarding these along with another section of sappers from 25 Engineer Regiment, whilst D Company headquarters had contrived, as company headquarters are want to do, to set up in the large blue and yellow liveried premises of a well-known Swedish furniture store at a retail park half a mile south along the expressway, where conditions were reported to be hellishly comfortable.
The Bundeswehr had responsibility for the defence of the airfield abutting the north east of the autobahn and expressway junction, but it still left a mere seventy three men and women to prevent a mile and a half of key real estate from falling into enemy hands.
Two junior NCOs were shaken awake; the cold and wet rainwater running down the sleeve of a wet proof jacket assisted the process of rousing both soldiers who had only been relieved as pointsmen barely half an hour before. Lance Corporal Maggie Hebden opened one eye, frowning in irritation.
“Whoever it is, I just came off a twelve hour stag so fuck off!”
Her tormentor pulled the zipper of her sleeping bag roughly down its entire length, spilling out the warmth that had accumulated there.
“Route maintenance….there’s signs missing apparently and a couple of packets nearly went astray down the road so get yer arse out of yer maggot now!” growled the section commander “The sooner it’s done, the sooner you can get back to kip.”
“Sorry, Staff.” Maggie said and sat upright, shivering in the cold.
Just a dark shape against the canvas wall of the 9x9 they were using as a communal sleep area, the senior NCO nudged another form with the toe cap of a muddy boot, ensuring Maggie’s oppo was not considering anything so foolish such as going back to sleep.
“Take ‘nine three’ and hook up the trailer sharpish.” he said, unmoved by the angry response but not taking umbrage to it either.
“There’s coffee if you’re quick.”
The tent flap rustled as he departed and Maggie switched on her torch in order to use the shiny bottom of a mess tin to peer critically at her reflection.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you look really sexy when you’ve just woken up?” Lance Corporal Tony Myers asked as he unzipped his own bag and clambered out into the cold, damp and musty smelling air.
“No?”
“They’re never likely too, either.”
He ducked just in time, avoiding the flying item of field dining ware.
Tony was looking north-east, his face set in a grimace against the rain, his helmets fabric cover sodden so that the rim dripped like a leaking faucet in a dozen places. He rolled back the camouflage net entrance for Maggie to drive the long wheelbase Landrover out onto the hard shoulder before reversing under the flyover to the signing trailer. They had been able use an insulated power cable running horizontally along the concrete side of the expressway’s ‘on ramp’ to secure one edge of the camouflage nets and create a ‘garage’ they could drive in and out of. It made life far easier than having to roll up and stow the items every time a vehicle was used and unfurled again at the completion of the task.
Despite the constant rain the battle was easily located by the flashes of gunfire and explosions reflecting off the underside of the clouds.
Maggie left the engine running and joined him, helping manhandle the trailer, hooking it up and connecting the chunky rubber clad electric socket.
“They’re still at it.” He observed, referring to the direction he had been looking, the Vormundberg battle.
“And let’s hope they are still going strong when the 4 Corps Yanks get here...” Maggie began, but her voice tailed off in embarrassment. People were fighting and dying over there in the distance.
They shared a mug of strong, hot and sweet compo coffee made with evaporated milk as Staff Sergeant Vernon gave them the unwelcome news that he had no exact location for where the fault was supposedly located so they had to check a twenty six mile stretch of autobahn to Lehrte, where TP 31s area of responsibility began.
The driver who had called in the complaint had been less than helpful.
“You’ve signs down on the approach to a junction.”
“Which junction?”
“The junction with the cocked up signage, of course!” Click! Brrrrrrr!
With the trailer hooked up and connected they paused to stand together at the edge of the autobahn’s embankment facing the dark forest as they loaded their personal weapons, SA80s. These were of the older Block 1 model, the problem child, brought out of whatever cobweb bedecked armoury they had lain in since the MOD had given up trying to offload them.
352 Provost Coy’s Block 2s had all been redistributed amongst mobilised infantry reservists.
Tony clambered over the tailgate and laid his rifle across his knees whereas Maggie slotted hers into the weapon rack behind the drivers and front passengers seats.
SOPs stated that for safety purposes vehicles should always proceed in a manner that did not conflict with the intended direction of the traffic, in other words they were supposed to drive east for a mile to the maintenance vehicle gate between the carriageways, drive west for eight miles to the junction that marked the extent of their assigned ‘turf’ before returning slowly in order to locate and correct the errant signage, a fifty four mile round journey.
After conducting a dynamic risk assessment that had taken less than a heartbeat Maggie decided to head west on the eastbound hard shoulder. This would avoid head-on collisions with any heavily laden Foden and get her back into her nice warm green maggot in at least half the time. However, they could have been on another planet as there was no traffic, no street lighting and not so much as a single unguarded bulb to be seen anywhere on the sodden landscape. Only the sound of to-ing and fro-ing helicopters ruined the effect.
Those few civilians who had not fled west were keeping a very low profile.
The black, wet ribbon of the autobahn stretched off into the distance as Maggie adjusted her PNGs and let out the clutch to pull away, but remained in second gear. On reaching the far side of the canal the Pointsman there moved the metal caltrops, the tyre puncturing spikes to disable vehicles attempting to run the roadblock, aside for them and Maggie gave him a friendly wave that was acknowledged with an unsmiling but perfunctory nod, the passive night goggles he wore adding to the cold and emotionless automaton effect.
“Miserable bugger isn’t he?” said Tony from the back as the linked, sharpened spikes were noisily dragged back into place behind them.
“Well dancing a jig every second for being the only one still alive after the Spetsnaz came calling would not really be appropriate, now would it?” Maggie replied without looking back.
“I suppose not, but what’s he got in that bergan side pouch he always has with him on point duty?” Tony asked, staring at the object of discussion as they drove past it.
“It isn’t scoff, he doesn’t go near it. He just sti
cks it on the verge by the chicane halt sign and collects it again when he’s relieved.”
“Did you ask him?” Maggie asked.
“No.”
“Then why ask me?”
Tony was silent for a moment.
“He’s still a weird fucker.”
As the Landrover drew away, the checkpoint with its covering infantrymen in a trench, and the solitary military policeman on traffic point duty were quickly swallowed by the night.
Maggie had undergone her recruits cadre at Chichester, or ‘Chi’ as referred to by members of ‘The Corps’, with the lone pointsman. He had been a very affable, happy go lucky young soldier back then though a little immature, and seriously keen on a WRAC member of his unit.
The pointsman owed his life to the makers of the helmet he had been wearing; the close range headshot delivered by the female commander of the Russian team had been deflected, although the scar on his forehead would be a visible reminder until the end of his days whenever he saw his own reflection. All that having been said though, having regained consciousness in a ditch buried beneath the bodies of his colleagues and finding himself staring into the dead eyes of the young woman he had been so fond of, it would never require the presence of a mirror to remind him of the events of that night.
Having recovered from his injuries he had been returned to duty but remained aloof. The sections new commander had tried to integrate him with his new comrades but when that had failed he had been permanently posted to the solitary role of pointsman at the TP, the task he had been undertaking when the rest of the original section had killed. But he went about that duty uncomplaining of the 12-on-6-off stag roster and remained distant, even to the extent of positioning himself well away from the covering sentries of 1 Wessex.
Maggie put aside all thoughts of the pointsman and his ghosts as she concentrated on not falling asleep at the wheel.
Tony sat in the rear of the vehicle where he used a heavily filtered red lamp to pick out the ‘NUT’ route signs as PNGs were in very short supply and limited to one per vehicle. He occasionally shouted out when a sign needed a slight adjustment due a combination of the rain saturating the ground and the wind acting on it like a sail, canting it over at an angle or toppling it to the sodden verge in the case of those on pickets. A couple of signs affixed to street furniture required a moment to be repointed an additional twist or two of the retaining wire ties to sit them more securely by Tony, with shoulders hunched against the rain and wind, his SA80 hung reversed down his back by its harness to keep water out of the barrel.
After seven miles the road began a long climb, the dark fields either side gave way to even darker forestry plantation, and once at the top Maggie halted again to allow Tony to lift another drunkenly leaning sign, rooting it more firmly with deft use of the signing vehicles most vital tool, a 2lb hammer. Two solid blows did the trick and Tony turned back to the vehicle, but paused as something in the distance caught his eye despite the rain. He slid open the driver’s side window.
“Would you look at that.” he said to Maggie.
She opened the door to lean out in order to see what he was referring to as the rain pounding the windscreen was not exactly an aid to viewing, and the windscreen wipers best effort was lacking.
Off on the horizon the position of the 4 Corps lead elements was just discernable by flashes reflected off the clouds in a similar manner to that of Vormundberg’s fight.
The flashes relented and vanished as another air threat was dealt with, and the progress continued, if indeed it had even paused at all. Out of the cloud base emerge a burning aircraft, falling to earth with no clue as to which side had owned it.
“Come on, let’s get moving.”
The road began a gentle incline but any elation that the sighting of 4 Corps had caused was diminished by the smell that became apparent, growing stronger by the moment.
Rüper auto services, named after a small village to the north, had served both truckers and the motoring public with fuel, food, a rest stop and motels for both east and west bound traffic until the war. When the coup in Poland had forced a sudden withdrawal by NATO to avoid being flanked a horde of refugees in some hundred or so vehicles had bypassed the military road blocks by using the tracks through the forestry plantation and descended upon the westbound services, desperate for fuel and food. They had been in sufficient numbers for their vehicles collective heat signature and radar return to register with the Soviet equivalent of JSTARS.
The refugees and their vehicles remain there still, hidden from view by the darkness but the nauseous petrochemical scent of napalm and that of its victims lingered on.
It was worse in daylight of course, the blackened and buckled cars and vans were nose to tail, side by side, a disordered logjam on the filling station forecourt and its approach ramp where they had attempted to extract fuel from storage tanks already emptied weeks before.
The southern services two hundred meters away had received the same treatment. The two infernos had burned unchecked, melting the tarmac of the autobahns so that in the dark on that uneven surface it is not unusual for tired drivers to think they have strayed off the road.
Perhaps this was the cause of the complaint and they could both head back to their sleeping bags?
No such luck.
A ‘Nut’ ‘UP’ arrow was pointing at an angle towards the Rüper auto services off ramp.
“Shit…some bastard has being playing silly buggers with the signs.” Tony shouted, turning his head as they passed the obviously interfered with item.
Maggie halted the vehicle and pressed her camouflage face veil, worn cravat style, against her nose in an effort to block out the stench of death as Tony clambered over the tailgate. She hated this place and usually held her breath and floored the accelerator on the downhill westbound route, treating any passengers to a severe bone rattling ride as the uneven surface was akin to the ‘slow-down-ripples’ from hell.
Lifting her PNGs clear of her face she looked at her watch; pressing the tiny button on one side of the casing to illuminate the hands and figured she could get over an hours sleep if she kept her foot down all the way back.
Maggie looked in the wing mirror, but it was beaded with raindrops and did not reflect any light from Tony’s red filtered torch so she gritted her teeth and opened the side window, grimacing in the rain as she peered back at the off ramp, but she could see no sign of Tony.
“Tony?” there was no response.
“TONY!” she paused to listen but there was just that miserable non-stop rain.
Muttering aloud, she lifted her SA80 from the weapons rack behind her, killed the engine and removed the ignition key.
Emerging into the rain she listened for a second before calling Tony’s name again.
He couldn’t seriously be playing a practical joke could he, knowing how she disliked this place?
Pulling the PNGs back into place and holding the rifle casually in one hand she walked cautiously to where the off ramp began. There was no sign at all of him and she now fully expected her partner to be playing a foolish prank as she started along, the blistered and melted road surface crunching beneath her feet, until she reached the nearest buckled and burnt out car, a people carrier. The naked wheel rims it was sat upon were now an integral part of the off ramps tarmac surface, sunk into the tarmacadam when the napalm had brought it to boil. The driver’s door was open, restricting her view further down the ramp. As she reached the open door she glanced inside. Even in the mixed shades of green from the PNGs she could make out a skeletal foot upon the brake pedal.
Bile rose in her throat and she fought the impulse to gag.
“Tony?…I am not fucking about here, so quit screwing around or you’re walking back, you bastard!”
Her foot struck something metallic that skittered away and looking down she saw it was a 3’ picket with ‘NUT’ still affixed.
Brittle tarmac crunched behind her and she started to turn, to shout an angr
y remark at Tony but something slipped over her head and contracted around her throat, stifling the retort. The SA80 clattered to the ground as Maggie raised both hands to her throat and as she did so a knee pressed into the small of her back, pulling her off balance.
The cheese-wire sliced deeply into the female British soldier’s fingers but he knew she was unable to even give voice to the pain and shock. The face veil about her throat to keep out the rain was a little hindering, but with a vigorous sawing motion it was but the work of a moment to cut through it and into the soft flesh beneath.
Vormundberg: Same time.
Royal Marines of A Company, 44 Commando, passed through the fighting positions of 2LI, the 2nd Battalion Light Infantry, to a pre-arranged point where guides from 2 Wessex led them safely through the lines of the men from Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire to a muddy forest track on the reverse slope. There, medics and the marines own quartermaster sergeant waited. 1 Troop was the first to arrive, numbering only nineteen men now, and their current troop commander, a corporal, carried out the reorganisation drills and reduced the troop further, sending one marine away in the direction of the medics, protesting vocally as he limped off.
The remainder stocked up on grenades, fragmentation and smoke, refilled magazines and water bottles, attempting at the same time to boost flagging energy reserves by shovelling cold compo rations into their mouths, replacing what the nervous energy and physical effort of close quarters combat had burned off. The small metal tin openers revealed a variety of contents from Baked Beans to Fruit Salad, all were devoured cold, straight from the tin. As ever though the ‘Cheese, Processed’ cans, and green mini packets of ‘Biscuits, Brown’ were passed over by many. For some, only the onset of starvation could motivate them to eat what was more commonly known as ‘Cheese Possessed’.