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

by Andy Farman

  “We can’t do anything without a correctly authenticated password sir, but try explaining that to a dumb ass civilian.” said Colonel Loos, interrupting his Dutch colleague. He went on. “My guy got quite rude and made personal comments about my parentage and lack of a future.” The Belgian soldier shook his head sadly. “Naturally I also terminated the call.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen.” General Hesher gave a little hint of a formal bow. “I mean that sincerely.”

  Both men returned to their work and his aide handed him yet another message slip.

  Dave Hesher smiled as he read the response of the commander of the Danish helicopter squadron, Eskadrille 723, to his governments declared neutrality.

  “Even if the Danish Prime Minister were thirty years younger, that position would still be a physical impossibility.” He gestured to the green chinagraph pencil his aide still held.

  “Toss that thing in the trash.”

  Pat had allowed himself to become distracted by a grief fuelled inner rage and that had blinkered his thinking. Men had died who need not have, and that was unforgivable.

  He took a moment to refocus, to force away the pain and then he took a deep breath.

  “The infantry still approaching from the sunken lane are now the priority target for the defensive fires. Get the mortars and SF kits on that now.” If he could isolate the Soviets, just as they were doing to his men, then they could be dealt with once the attack on 3 Company was defeated.

  Pat Reed did not say to himself “If” because he knew what his men were capable of.

  “The tank borne infantry on the right, what is the status there?”

  “We couldn’t stop them sir, they and the troops already on the old 8 Platoon position are advancing up the slope as we speak, but the Hussars, ours and those with the Jocks, they are thinning out the 23rds tanks.” The Ops Officer reported.

  Pat looked up as if something had suddenly occurred to him

  “Where’s the sarn’t major?” Pat asked, not seeing the big American in the CP bunker.

  Not far from the spot where 1CG’s Padre had been butchered by Spetznaz troops in the guise of Royal Marines, a Warrior IFV sat silently in a narrow, hull-down fighting position before a steep sided cutting that the stream flowed through. Ideally they would have had claymores in the cutting but the ground was very confined here and they had to work with what they had and make the best of it. The camouflage nets that disguised the Warrior had been skilfully arranged by the vehicle commander and Arnie Moore, the Top Sergeant of the half battalion of the 82nd Airborne that had been mated to the decimated British Guards battalion months before. He became the combined units RSM following the death of WO1 Barry Stone in combat back on the Elbe. Arnie was listening to the short lived fight between the Territorial Army soldiers and the tanks down the hill.

  The other members of the Warrior’s crew would have been happier to have sealed up the vehicle before the chemical weapons attacks but Arnie was in the open commander’s hatch. The pintle mounted ‘gimpy’ already charged and just the safety lug applied.

  The vehicles commander, Lance Corporal Chris Holmes, came from Middlesbrough. He was generally ignored on a social level by the driver, Guardsman McCardle, who considered anyone from south of Sunderland to be a southerner. The vehicle’s previous gunner had been born further north than both of them, in Wallsend, and had referred to them both as being one step removed from Cockneys. A sniper had killed the gunner back on the Elbe and his replacement came from a wee bit over to the west. He didn’t understand the offside rule, leg-before-wicket, or even the difference between Union and League. The British driver and commander didn’t like the stop and start of American football or ‘Rounders for boys’, as they termed Baseball. That kind of put a crimp on the usual source of male bonding conversation when the new gunner had first joined the crew. However, sufficient common ground had been found when it was revealed that the 82nd paratrooper was a reservist whose day job was that of a croupier in a Las Vegas casino. Given that the driver’s Dad, an electrician, had once rewired a betting shop in South Shields, it served as sufficient foundation for a sound comradeship between Guardsman ‘Macky’ McCardle and PFC Angelo Rodriguez.

  The 30mm Rarden cannon in the Warrior’s small turret takes its name from its manufacturer, now defunct, the Royal Armament Research and Development establishment, Enfield, and the gunners training had been provided by the driver, with a non-technical introduction and insight into its rather user unfriendly operation.

  “It’s gannin ta be a reet focken pain hand cranken the fust roond, fer ya marra!” but demonstration and imitation had made up for the language barrier that exists between English speakers from opposite sides of the Atlantic. It fired two types of ammunition, APDS, armour piercing discarding sabot, and HE. By day the HE rounds were recognisable of course by their yellow tips, and the three round clips were also yellow. At night, two round holes in the clip ensured correct identification by touch. APDS had black clips, blue tips and one hole in the clip.

  A problem arose they engaged a target of opportunity with less than three rounds and lost count of how many rounds had been expended. Three clips were loaded at a time but it was important to count the rounds as they were fired or a ‘gap-in-feed’ would necessitate a full unload of the weapon followed by a reload. After three rounds a fresh clip of three had to be loaded despite there still being two full clips ready. The mantra was ‘Three rounds fired… three rounds required’.

  “Divent forgit, nay single roond blats or ye’ll fockoop. Three roonds at a time is easy tay count, but mind ya hay-a couple o-loose ones tay hand, reet?”

  The miserable weather was never ending, or so it seemed. When was it that they had arrived here, and it had been a crisp and white hillside, was it only a week? The stream had been frozen over back then, but Arnie had seen its potential as a highway into not only their battalion’s rear, but into all of those of the defenders on the Vormundberg.

  Downhill, away on the left, 51mm mortars fired on a higher and higher trajectory as the enemy drew ever closer. Grenades exploded, anti-tank weapons launched with a bang and the T-90’s gun fired HEF at the dug-in light infantrymen. The fighting grew in intensity.

  During the Great War, which some know simply as WW1, hand grenades came into their own as trench warfare weapons. The casing and explosive fill may vary but the essential concept has changed little.

  The grenades now flew thick and fast between attackers and defenders. Wounded victims screamed in agony, dying victims called for their mothers. Here and there the butchery in the darkness was revealed for a split second by a muzzle flash or yet another grenades detonation.

  Hand to hand combat, the adversaries indistinguishable from one another where they rolled in the mud. Bayonets and fighting knives stabbed and slashed, rifle butts clubbed and entrenching tools rose and fell, hacking at an enemy’s eyes within the gas mask or respirator that protected them, slicing into throats or necks. And all the time the rain fell like a curse.

  Shut down and without power, with batteries at a premium, the Warriors night viewing devices were turned off but Arnie was relying on a more basic system. Even without respirators and hoods that muffled the senses, it would have been difficult to see or hear. Nature was assisting him now and again with a helpful lighting flash, but it meant he also had to stick a patch over one eye to preserve his own night vision. An M8 strip of detector paper filled the bill there. Exposing a thin strip of adhesive backing he had stuck it over the right visor to be his shooting eyes makeshift blackout until the time came.

  Lighting strobed now, and he saw the paths either side of the stream were clear for some thirty plus metres, all the way to where it disappeared into dead ground. The stream immediately before the Warrior had created a cutting twenty feet deep in the soft earth over the passage of centuries. Its grassy sides rose at an angle that offered a challenging scramble to fit and young ramblers in peacetime.

  Thunder rumbled, and
out of habit Arnie had counted the interval, just as he always had since his father had explained to him how he could judge the distance to a storm that way, forty years before.

  When the lighting flashed a second time Arnie didn’t have to wait for any thunder to see the storm was almost upon them.

  Soviet troops filled the stream cutting.

  In the time it took for him to disengage the GPMG’s safety lug and nudge Rodriguez with his boot in warning, the leading man’s left foot had snagged a length of fishing line. Pinned to the ground on one side of the stream was a flare pot, without the flare picket or spring assembly; D10 cable and ground spikes from a discarded IPK, individual protection kit, held it firmly to the wet ground. Opposite the flare pot, on the other side of the stream, a fragmentation grenade had been placed in an old compo baked beans can. Arnie had replaced the timed fuse with a blasting cap so the moment the grenade was dragged from the can, releasing the spring arm, it detonated.

  The explosion covered the loud crack of the flare pot activating, its detonator blowing off the end-cap and exposing the white phosphorus filler to the air. Illuminated in the harsh white glare and stunned by the grenade blast, only the quickest were beginning to react when the Rarden and the ‘gimpy’ opened fire. The 30mm cannon was loaded with HE and on the rare event it passed through a body without hitting a bone, the round exploded elsewhere, such as the man stood behind, but the tissue damage and shock would be fatal more often than not anyway. More usually the round exploded in the body, adding bone fragments to the shrapnel it produced.

  Firing in short bursts and double-taping, Arnie used the GPMG to pick off the enemy who attempted to escape up the steep sides of the cutting. Spent cases fell from the spring loaded aperture in the underside of the body, rattling noisily on the turret before rolling off its sides, or down through the open hatch to bounce off the floor of the troop compartment with a loud metallic ring.

  With the two Americans occupying ‘his’ turret, Chris Holmes exited out of the rear of the vehicle with his SLR and added well aimed rifle fire to that of the automatic cannon and machine gun.

  The Rarden did bloody work on the close packed troops but despite that there was return fire coming their way, cracking overhead or ricocheting off the welded aluminium hull. These were not green troops and they employed fire and manoeuvre to back off the way they had come, down into the dead ground, leaving a cutting that was littered with their dead and wounded. The persistent nerve agent, VX, was already beginning to account for those injured men.

  In the dead ground a hasty reorganisation immediately took place. The senior surviving officer tried for artillery support but none was available. The supply of artillery rounds was again critical.

  The Czech officer believed they had met a defensive position and was planning accordingly, he did not even consider the possibility that it was a deliberate ambush.

  The GPMG was silent now, its barrel glowing red. Arnie Moore groped about on the cold wet top of the turret for three lengths of D10 cable which had slipped away due to the recoil of the 30mm cannon, something he had not calculated for. Brushing away the pile of expended metal links which had created the belt of ammunition, his rubber gloves closed on two of them, the third could not be found. No plan survives first contact, and he squeezed the first clicker but nothing happened, the command wire had been severed in the shelling. The second claymore did explode, killing a dozen men, including one of two groups of three that the officer had just delegated the task of tank hunting. All but two of the men carrying RPG-29s had been left lying in the stream or cutting, these remaining two men he had teamed up with a pair of riflemen each.

  The blast had now cut his remaining force down to a handful, too few to continue with the plan until the rest of the battalion caught up, but perhaps he still had enough men to exact some revenge now?

  The stream ran red, and surprise had allowed them to do grievous harm to the enemy, but that surprise was gone now, they had shot their bolt and it was time to go.

  “Corporal Holmes? Give a hand with the cam net, we’re going!” Arnie shouted, trying manfully to drag aside the camouflage net without leaving the turret, but failing. No assistance was forthcoming from the vehicle commander and he looked over the side of the turret. The trip flare was sputtering, its light beginning to fail as it burnt out, but there was enough light to see the dead eyes through the respirator eye pieces, staring up at the night sky.

  With a final flicker the flare was extinguished, and with the return of the dark the incoming small arms fire increased.

  A grenade, flung hard but landing a little short, detonated and shrapnel struck the armoured sides of the fighting vehicle.

  The Warriors Rolls Royce Perkins V8 growled and the cannons thermal sight was powered up. Angelo allowed the grenadier to creep forward and attempt another throw; the second and third rounds were wasted.

  “Where’s Corporal Holmes, sir?” Macky asked on the intercom.

  “Dead, back us up!”

  The hull down fighting position had been filling with rainwater for several hours, completely covering the Warrior’s tracks, and a mini tidal wave was sent to the rear as the IFV left the position. The Warrior took with it the camouflage net, and Arnie had to lower himself back inside and reach for his knife as the net was now stretched across the hatch opening. The nets edges had become entangled in the tracks and it was clinging tightly to the vehicles body from front to rear. It would need to be cut completely free later.

  Now clear of the waterlogged position Macky halted, engaged forward gear and began turning to the right, upslope, to take them back towards the centre of the battalion’s lines.

  Arnie was about to begin cutting the netting away from the hatch when he was thrown off his feet, and a wave of heat washed over him. Thick, choking smoke filled the fighting vehicles interior and flames flickered at the front of the troop compartment. The Warrior rolled backwards into the stream and came up with a jolt against its opposite bank. Arnie’s ears rang from an explosion but he could still hear Guardsman McCardle who was screaming in the intercom.

  Rodriguez was trying to open the rear troop door but it was jammed against the stream bank.

  With each breath, soot was clogging the filter of his respirator. Rodriguez was frantically trying to force the troop door and the driver’s screams became more strident.

  Arnie Moore pulled the jack plug from his helmets headset. He was damned if he was dying like this. He hacked and slashed at the net before grabbing the gunners arm, pulling him to the hatch and they struggled out, up onto the top of the turret.

  Rounds cracked by his head, the paratroopers lunged over the turrets edge to lie behind it and Arnie lost his grip on his knife as he did so, but he was out of the line of fire. He couldn’t reach the pintle mounting, and both his M4 and Angelo’s were still in the weapons rack inside the IFV. Smoke was pouring out of the open hatch now and Arnie had only Colin Probert’s Yarin automatic.

  The last RPG-26 had not been a wasted shot, and with a sense of satisfaction the Czech officer knelt beside a PK machine gun on top of the cutting, directing its fire and ordering two men forward with grenades to finish the crew of the British IFV while the PK kept them pinned down.

  A half mile away, the T-90 leading the attack on 2LI’s flank was struck by a Hellfire missile and blew up. Its killer headed back uphill towards the safety of the reverse slopes before beginning a fresh stalk, this time on the enemy in 2CG’s 4 Company area. Its gunner saw the distinctive green tracer of Soviet small arms fire, just left of their line of flight. A one second burst from the Apache’s 30mm cleansed the top of the cutting of the last of the Czech 23rd infantry in 4 Company’s lines.

  Macky was screaming shrilly now, the fire had reached the drivers compartment and was visible to the two Americans through the armoured glass of the hatch as if the driver had lit a candle inside, a flickering yellow light silhouetting the Guardsman’s head from behind. The camouflage net was pulled tig
ht across his hatch; he could only open it a few inches despite the strength lent him by desperation, his gloved fingers visible as they gripped the hatches underside. They both pulled and heaved at the net but it required more than brute force.

  Arnie tried to remember where the knife had fallen, splashing back through the stream and clambering once more atop of the vehicle, risking the cutting of his own NBC suit and gloves as he desperately groped about the netting on the roof. He couldn’t find it, couldn’t see a damned thing in the dark and the rain.

  Flame, firelight reflecting off the streams waters revealed the knife’s location; its blade gleamed on the side of the bank. Arnie slowly climbed down and retrieved it before re-joining Rodriguez. The illumination was being provided by flames issuing through the narrow gap in the drivers hatch. Macky McCardle was no longer screaming but Arnie had to firmly grasp Rodriguez by the arm and lead him away, towards the sound of fighting on the battalions other flank.

  The 23rd’s armour was being reduced; just five T-90 and T-76 remained on the right whilst the six on the left flank were still awaiting the infantry on foot, unaware they had withdrawn back to the sunken lane having been caught in the open by the mortars. Counter battery fire had been requested, and promised, but it had not materialised, in fact the barrage was gradually falling silent for lack of ammunition once more. They moved left along the lane, scrambling over burnt out vehicles and detouring around freshly destroyed and still burning ones until they met up with the remaining trudging infantry from 23rd MRR and together they shook out into formation to begin the final stretch from the lane to the Vormundberg itself.

  Gunfire support for the infantry attack on 3 Company was now a quarter of what it . The armour could not climb the slope 7 and 8 Platoons had withdrawn up earlier in the day thanks to the shovel and pick work that had increased the gradient, but they still tried.