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

by Andy Farman

  Out of the turret came the loader and gunner, but not the commander.

  “He’s staying to see it’s destroyed.” The loader answered Dougal’s query.

  Dougal led them back but there was no A Company waiting for them. Perhaps they had received other orders, but either way Dougal now headed directly for where their vehicles had been camouflaged and left hidden.

  After several minutes at a slow trot, their way ahead was obscured by a wall of thick, acrid black smoke from the burning tyres of a Coyote armoured reconnaissance vehicle. Dougal, coughing and his eyes smarting emerged from the smoke beyond it to find he had arrived at the harbour area. He took a pace forwards and stopped, aghast. Everywhere he looked there were smashed and burning vehicles of the Nova Scotia Highlanders. Shell craters pitted the area, evidence that it had received the attention of a full regiment of artillery.

  There was no one else about, just fallen and splintered trees, and burning LAV III IFVs.

  “What now, sir?” Sergeant Blackmore asked.

  Back down the track they had come along the Leopard’s machine gun began firing. The vehicle commander had for reasons best known to himself decided to stay to the end.

  “The river” Dougal replied “as fast as we can and over one of the ribbon bridges to join the French.”

  They moved out quickly, leaving the fiery vehicle graveyard behind them, slipping on the muddy track as they pushed on.

  Behind them tank guns opened fire and the Leopard’s machine gun sounded no more.

  At last Dougal could hear the sound of running water and see flickering light through the trees. The smell of war was here too and the throb of an idling diesel engine was discernable.

  The track ended suddenly and the encroaching trees gave way to the river bank with the Hungarian built ribbon bridge.

  The diesel engine he could hear was directly opposite them, and a tank sat astride the ramp cut into the bank on the French side of the river.

  No night viewing device was needed to identify it; the flames from a pair of burning French Leclerc tanks were already illuminating the T-80 of the 77th Guards Tank Division as its machine guns opened fire.

  TP 32, MSR ‘NUT’ (Up), north of Brunswick, Germany:

  “What’s it doing?” Staff Sergeant Vernon asked. He had gone to check on the eastern pointsman, Lance Corporal Tessa Newall.

  The only sound now from the airfield was that of metal upon metal from the direction of the crippled T-90.

  Staff Vernon was wedged into the gun pit of the 13 Platoon Wessex guys. Even given Tessa’s slight build it was a little snug

  in there.

  The gun controller was peering through the GPMG’s starlight scope sight.

  “An armoured recovery vehicle turned up a while ago and stopped inside the trees. The tank crew probed for more mines, and now the wrecker has come alongside and the mechanics are hitting that thing with ever bigger hammers.”

  “Can’t you stop them with this?” he tapped the cold metal of the gimpy’s top cover.

  “Take a look for yourself.” The infantryman told the military policeman.

  S/Sgt Vernon put his eye to the sight and quickly withdrew it. A BTS-5B tracked recovery vehicle was alongside the tank, and a juicy high value target it made, but the open maw of the T-90s muzzle stared straight back.

  “Off-putting, isn’t it?” the gun controller said with a chuckle.

  “They are conserving ammunition I reckon, but if we have a blat in their direction we’ll soon know about it. We need something a bit bigger and the LAW80s don’t have the legs.”

  “The radios are back up and there is some Italian artillery somewhere. We could give them a go?”

  “No one here knows how to call in artillery fire, do you?”

  “Yes actually.” The staff sergeant replied. “I wasn’t always a Monkey.”

  The map provided the Soviets grid reference and his compass the bearing from his location to the target. Unlike the remaining enemy tanks this one was not tucked in too close to safely call in fire from nine miles away, not without the risk of themselves becoming collateral damage at any rate.

  The obvious problem, passing a fire control order in English to an Italian, was happily solved by the US mortar fire direction centre along at TP33 using one of its company’s cooks to translate.

  “Hello Mike Three One, Address Group Tango Alpha, this is Quebec One Two Bravo, address group Victor Zulu, relay to Golf One One Delta, address group Foxtrot Yankee, fire mission over?”

  “Mike Three One, relay message for Golf One One Delta, address group Foxtrot Yankee, fire mission…send over?”

  “Quebec One Two Bravo, fire mission grid five eight nine, zero six seven, direction zero two nine nine, tank and recovery vehicle in the open, neutralise, over.”

  “Mike Three One, fire mission grid five eight nine, zero six seven, direction zero two nine nine, tank and recovery vehicle in the open, neutralise, out.”

  There followed a delay as the company cook, a chef in a Sicilian restaurant in Bouckville, Mississippi, gave the message via field telephone to a battery commander who hailed from Genoa. Accent wise it was comparable to a resident of Somerset speaking to a Scottish Highlander, but it worked.

  “Mike Three One, shot, over.”

  “Quebec One Two Bravo, shot, out.”

  Almost a minute passed before the US FDC transmitted again.

  “Splash, over.”

  “Splash, out.”

  The three rounds missed by a good hundred metres and there was frantic activity as the crew of the high value asset, the armoured recovery vehicle, hurried to depart.

  Calmly, the RMP NCO adjusted the fires and as the recovery vehicle carefully reversed back along the cleared path through the mines it received a near miss. But so did the gun pit as it did not take an Einstein to work out where the spotter was.

  “On target, fire for effect!” Vernon shouted as the ground heaved from a sabot round that had already been loaded and ready in the guns breach. It was a far quicker process to fire an existing round than carry out a full unload. The guns twenty two pre-arranged rounds in the automatic loader were not a major task to rearrange but it still meant a delay when even seconds count.

  Heavy calibre machine gun and lighter 7.62 rounds tore up the ground.

  The GPMG was dismounted by its gunner braving the incoming fire to preserve it from damage, and the occupants of the gun pit huddled down to weather the storm. The next main gun round was HEF, high explosive fragmentation. Never has fifty seven seconds seemed so endless, but with the arrival of the next rounds a 155mm shell struck the engine deck and killed the crew as well as fling the turret twenty feet.

  The tank was wrecked and the recovery vehicle was on its side burning.

  “So you were an MFC or something, before you transferred to the RMP?” the gun controller asked, re-mounting the GPMG onto its tripod.

  “No, that was the first time I ever called in a fire mission, even in practice.”

  They all stared at him.

  “I was a civilian projectionist, and I showed old 8mm training films to RA army cadets on Tuesday evenings.” The staff sergeant replied.

  “Anyway, must be off.”

  Ariete Task Force

  Autobahn 2

  Echo One Five, the lead Lince with Lorenzo’s tank squadron once again found the unmistakable signs of the Soviet’s passage through the forest. It cut directly across their path where the enemy had turned south.

  Lorenzo had them halt as his squadron caught up, and he left his tank to speak to the recce troop’s commander at the young officer’s request.

  They squatted beside the muddy and deep indentations created by tank tracks, the rain now starting to turn them into puddles. He did not know what he and the recce troop commander were supposed to gain from the experience. He was in danger of allowing his sense of the ridiculous to take over. Had the young man sampled the mud between finger and thumb before announcing sagely t
hat ‘Long knife pale face’s steel horses pass um thataway, maybe one hour, maybe two’ he would not have been able to stave off the threatening laughter. It was not that he did not realise the seriousness of the situation, but lieutenant colonels get scared too and the human psyche will clutch at humour as a way to release the stress.

  Indeed the young man had dipped a finger into the mud and held it for Lorenzo to smell. One of the vehicles was leaking fuel, but he scented petrol, not diesel. The Soviets were growing desperately sort of fuel if they were using the far more flammable petrol in at least some of their fuel tanks. Modern armoured vehicles were designed to run on diesel, although petrol, paraffin or even alcohol would keep them going if push came to shove, but at a cost. Crew and vehicle survivability was greatly reduced. Not for nothing had the petrol engined Sherman tanks of the previous war been nickname ‘Tommy Cookers’ by the German troops.

  Echo One Two had its engine switched off but it coasted downhill, its driver controlling the speed with the vehicles handbrake so as not to have brake lights reveal its presence.

  The Lince thermal scanners found nothing untoward between TP33 and the current position, four miles from Braunschweig airfield.

  At the next truck stop, set on a slope cut into the forest, the downward incline of the autobahn ceased and the Lince engine restarted.

  The absence of the enemy was perplexing. Somewhere out there was more armour of the Soviet’s 91st Tank Regiment, and it had apparently come from blocking positions in the Lehre valley but now had vanished. Had they given up on the idea? If so, then why had they not appeared at the next TP where autobahn 2 crossed the canal?

  Set just back in the sodden treeline behind the truck stop, a ZSU-23-4 reported the Italian recce vehicles passage. Completely reliant on battery power to operate its radios and muscle power to hand-crank the turret if necessary at that moment, the anti-aircraft artillery vehicle had escaped detection due to its lack of residual heat despite having been in

  The Autobahns 5

  situ less than thirty minutes. The vehicles refrigeration unit was hardly a requirement for the current area and weather the vehicle was now experiencing, and it was not an intentional stealthy addition to its manufacture either. 91st Tank was part of the Constanta garrison on the Black Sea coast, the ‘Florida’ of Eastern Europe, where high temperatures required specialist solutions for vehicles such as the Zeus. The ZSU-23-4 was a complex piece of machinery and notorious for overheating, even at the other climatic extreme on the often frigid Barents Sea coast. The engine overheated when stationary, as did the electrical systems, causing a shutdown, and it was therefore an operational necessity that the refrigeration unit be added to the Black Sea region units. The crew were aware of the unintended benefits to concealment even if the manufacturer at Mytishchi had not been.

  Several minutes later the first Ariete main battle tanks hove into view.

  The Soviet battalion commander listened to the reports of their appearance from the Zeus. He had been hoping for the entire force to continue its dash to TP32 as it had initially in reaching the hill fort in time to spoil his attack there.

  “Driver, what is our fuel state?”

  The answer cancelled any idea he may have entertained concerning the possibility of seeking out the Italian main body with an aggressive move back east to TP33, and surprising them with a meeting engagement.

  Only three tanks had appeared which left him with the age old problem of guessing whether this was a lone unit or just the first of a larger force.

  “All vehicles, advance to the tree line and engage the enemy.”

  The commander of the lead Ariete saw the heat sources appear in his thermal sight above them and to the right; seizing the commander’s override he slewed the turret around to face the threat.

  “GUNNER!… SABOT!…TANK..”

  The enemy fired as the Ariete MBTs appeared in their sights. The lead Italian was hit three times and simply blew up. The second Ariete also received an immediate killing hit and the commanders and loaders turret hatches blew open. Like a pair of chimneys the hatches spewed smoke from the burning propellant of its own bag charges as the tank continued down the incline with its dead crew. The third Ariete had just jinked onto a new leg, the zig zag course throwing off the three gunners who had targeted it. One non-penetrating hit and two near misses had its driver suddenly reverse at an angle across the three lanes of the autobahn. It fired a sabot in reply, discharging both smoke and chaff grenades at the same time. Striking the crash barrier at speed it disappeared from view down the embankment where only swift action by its driver prevented its overturning on the steep slope.

  The were no other NATO vehicles left to shoot and the T-72 to the left of the battalion commanders was pouring smoke from the turret as its crew bailed out.

  He had both complete surprise and a better than three to one advantage over the Italians, so the two-for-one result was a poor one.

  The second Ariete had reached the bottom of the incline and come to a halt. The fire in its turret reached the stacked HESH rounds in the lowest storage bins and explosions began tearing it apart from within.

  They pulled back, retracing their route to the nearest fire break, arriving as 155mm rounds, called in by the survivor of the ambush, began landing on the edge of the lorry park. The next fall of shot landed on the right edge of the ambush position, the next in its centre and the last salvo struck the left side of the position. Expert fire control and gunnery, the Soviet commander wondered if these troops were chosen at random or were they some crack unit. He detached his last three IFVs to assist in the seizing of the autobahn over the Mitterland Kanal, and headed north with his tanks, intending to turn west again and await the remaining Arietes arrival at the bridge.

  He would hit them from the rear as they counter-attacked and then he would see how good they really were.

  The commander of the 13 tank did not like built up areas, it allowed a dismounted enemy to get in close, it provided countless ambush sites, and of course it robbed his M1 of its manoeuvrability.

  The M1 and the Pumas avoided the shapes upon the car parks surface. Like scattered dolls, tossed away by a petulant child, the dead of D Company, 1 Wessex, lay where they had been cut down.

  The giant furniture store burned out of control, flames leaping high despite the rain.

  The 13 Tank and the Pumas had the benefit of eyes-on intelligence from 14 Platoon’s LAW80 team on the elevated Autobahn 391.

  Apparently far less concerned by the threat of the 94mm anti-tank rocket than they were by the Italian 155mm battery, the five remaining T-72s and T-90s were moving frequently but staying relatively close by to the autobahns.

  The Italian commanders plan to draw out the vehicles to defend against his detached troop upon the autobahn had seemed a bust until three of the Soviet tanks went north along the tow path before dashing east beside Autobahn 2 under cover of smoke. This left the 13 tank merely outnumbered two to one, but whoever the guy was commanding the defence had a plan, apparently.

  “TANK ACTION, RIGHT!”

  A vibration on the road bed had caused some hopeful glances to the west, but the cause was not the arrival of 4 Corps but the next Soviet bid at taking the junction and bridge.

  The pair of T-72s on the south side opened fire with high explosive fragmentation rounds, 12.7mm and 7.62mm machine guns.

  Having climbed the embankment on to Autobahn 2 east of the airfield where they had RV’d with the IFVs. The Soviets did not wish to hanging about. Safety from the 155mm guns relied upon closing quickly with the defenders. However, the BTR’s attempt to climb the steep embankment met with little success. Three T-90s sat on Autobahn 2; the BTR blocked the way for the tracked BMPs, its eight wheels unable to gain traction on the muddy slope.

  Close to the bridge, the time had come to deal with the remaining pair of T-72s there.

  Baz Cotter used the periscope for the GPMG’s C2 sight to arrange the four crouching LAW80 operators out of
view behind the crash barrier of Autobahn 2 and describe the target as he prepared a shermouli.

  Each of the 94mm men had one of the weapons on their shoulders and a second weapon ready beside them.

  “Okay, I can only see one of them, number two is out of sight in the loading bay of one of those little factor units. But, there is the one Nev already had a pop at and it is about one hundred metres straight ahead, and it is at a slight angle in the street.” He lowered the device. “The good news is the turret isn’t facing this way, the bad news is you can’t see the missing ERA blocks where Nev hit because a wall is in the way, so aim for the right side of the turret, and obviously try and hit the same place.”

  “This had better bleedin’ work or some arms dealer’s customer services are getting a snotty letter from my solicitor.” Nev said.

  “Get ready Nev…” Baz rose up and aimed the shermouli at the tank, intending to put the flare beside the tank where they could see it without illuminating the entire junction.

  He fired, and straight away it became obvious he had not thought it through that well. The thing did not simply hit the side of the tank and lie there obediently providing a source of light, it was rocket propelled and as long as the rocket was active it was not lying still for anyone. It ricocheted from the tank, to the road, to the wall, across the road and bounced off the wall there also before skidding along the road to fetch up beside the gutter.

  The T-72 was back-lit by the flare and that would have to do.

  Nev rose up, fired a spotting round and adjusted his aim before squeezing off the 94mm rocket, the third one to be fired by him at this same tank that night. An ERA block performed its design function, but a patch of armour was now exposed. Like a sluggish Mexican wave the AT men popped up and fired. Four 94mm rockets and no kill until Nev launched the fifth, and that finally penetrated and set off one of the tanks own rounds in the automatic loader.