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

by Andy Farman

  “Pete…if you get topped can I shag yer wife?”

  “You may as well, I already shagged yours!”

  The smell of cordite, gun smoke, and the burnt almonds scent of high explosive was tinged with that particular smell that results in a dying man releasing his bowels.

  To the left and right the Aussies and Kiwis, as well as the Wessex B and C Companies, all remained down in the prone position. They had taken an infantry battalion’s position after a hard and vicious fight but now the advance to contact was resumed.

  12 Platoon were now the point section, stepping short as the ground began to slope away before them. The quiet was restored with only the sound of their boots moved through foot high grass for ten minutes. The green grass and fragrant wild flowers, a pastoral setting Baz Cotter would have liked to have enjoyed over a picnic. A perfect vista, a perfect warm summer’s day to enjoy with the family. Only a skylark’s song was absent.

  Private McKenzie and L/Cpl Silva, the 1 Section gun group, abruptly dropped down among the wild flowers. The crack of high velocity rounds only registering on his consciousness like an afterthought.

  “COVER!”

  Dash, down, roll, sights, observe…

  …nothing.

  A butterfly landed upon Shaun Silva’s neck, its gossamer touch should have tickled and elicited a reaction but Shaun was beyond ever doing that again.

  “Anybody see anything?”

  “Hello Four One this is Four Nine, do you have a sitrep for me, over?”

  “Four One, Four One Alpha has two down, no shooter seen…wait out.”

  They could not stay here all day waiting for the enemy to get bored and go home, although on a purely personal level that thought had merit.

  “Dopey…send someone on a dummy run.”

  Cpl Hemp picked Spider as he was closest to another piece of cover. Webber rolled onto his side, keeping out of sight as he undid his bergan’s straps, and after a moment to prepare he launched himself off the ground and towards a fold eight feet away. Turf ripped up about him and Spider went down screaming.

  “Section…three hundred…eleven o’clock…water trough in field…two o’clock from trough…two clicks…enemy gun group!” Dopey Hemp had seen the muzzle flash and 2 Section engaged it while Baz sent the OC his sitrep and requested a mortar fire mission, which was refused as they weren’t going to expend hard to replace mortar rounds on a single gun trench.

  First thing first was to win the fire fight, show them who the boss was and keep their heads down. Once that was achieve the rate of fire was reined to preserve ammunition, fire control being exerted by the section commanders.

  1 Section was down over half its fire power without the gun group, ergo they were too under-gunned to leave behind as a point of fire so Baz looked for cover that would allow the platoon to get closer without being seen. There was none.

  Baz pressed the quick release clips on his bergan’s straps before he made the rolling motion with both hands, to signal they were going to do it the hard way, skirmishing forwards.

  The art of skirmishing is to judge how long it takes an enemy to see you, aim at you and fire at you. If you are up on your feet longer than three seconds you are living on borrowed time.

  Jez Hancock had come to him from B Company on promotion to sergeant and Baz pointed to himself, meaning Jez would give covering fire as Baz moved first. The sections had all been numbered off and those numbers were etched on their brains, they moved by half sections, by even and odd numbers.

  In case someone had spotted him he rolled before getting up and dodged to the side, a little zigzag, and then he was down, rolling, setting his sights and firing an aimed shot at the Chinese gun group.

  It was tiring, very tiring, but as they closed with the Chinese machine gun the enemy tried to bug out.

  No way.

  The GPMG does not have a single shot facility; it is automatic repetitive fire or nothing. 2 Section’s gun was keeping the Chinese gun group pinned with accurate but short bursts, double-tapping the trigger to expend two rounds at a time, although a really good gunner could single tap.

  With the rest of the platoon getting dangerously close to the line of fire the 2 Section gun ‘switched’, it picked a point an enemy doing a runner from the trench would head for, and by switching they denied them that option.

  As the gun switched 1 Section closed on the enemy, careful not to bunch up on the position and it was Cpl Dave Whyte who grenaded them in their hole before he followed through with the bayonet for good measure.

  The platoon moved beyond the trench and went to ground in all round defence with Baz signalling Dopey to come up with his section.

  With a very hot barrel to contend with the gunner made-safe, gripped the gimpy by its butt and put it over his shoulder, finding the point of balance and high tailing it over to rejoin the platoon.

  Dopey left just one of their number to care for Spider who had been shot through the shins.

  They stayed there in the fragrant wild flowers, under a perfect blue sky, as the rest of the company caught up and 13 Platoon took over as point.

  Two miles north of Nowra, New South Wales. Monday 17th December, 0700hrs

  “Fortune Cloverleaf, Smackdown is flight of two Foxtrot One Fours, eleven hundred pounds of fuel internal for thirty minutes on station, loadout is CBU, Mk-77 and 250 pound retarded.”

  “Roger Smackdown, a very good morning to you, we will have trade for you in a jiffy, please wait out.” The Irish Guard’s FAC’s voice was a calm and pleasant Irish lilt at complete odds to the cacophony going on in the background. The British had not expected an easy time of it and the Chinese 9th Tank Regiment was not disappointing them. Snatches of a fiercely fought ground war arrived in stereo to Lt Comdr. Pelham with each transmission from the forward air controller.

  As promised, they soon had their first tasking of the day and turned east towards the battlefield.

  Pillars of smoke, the funeral pyres of men and vehicles, were visible from the moment the F-14s descended through thick cloud on clearing the high ground of Morton National Park. The Chinese may have been on short rations but they had all kinds of ordnance to spare. The Guards Mechanised Division had been spotted by a forward O.P whilst still traversing the Kangeroo Valley, beyond Cambewarra Mountain. It was unfortunate but an armoured unit on the move tends to be a little low on stealth. As they had emerged from the woods at the base of the mountain the enemy had been ready for them. The leading unit, the Irish Guards, had been shaking out into a more extended formation on countryside not unlike the North German Plains from the mountains to the sea. Nice for long range tank gunnery and the Chinese had some good ones.

  To the west of the F-14s, roughly centred over the Ettrema Gorge, the ‘orphans’ cab rank , the surviving aircraft from USS Nimitz and USS Constellation, orbited and awaited the FACs call.

  “I don’t see them…anybody have eyeball on the target?” The sun was still fairly low in the sky, shining in their eyes and making observation difficult. The Chinese were very good indeed at avoiding the attentions of NATO close air support by hunkering down when aircraft where about. The target indication described the enemy as a tank in a small copse, fifty metres west of a farmhouse with a red roof. She eventually saw the farmhouse, and the copse, but no tank.

  “Zero One this is Zero Two, I have a visual on a small structure at the corner of a field just east of the copse with exhaust fumes visible.”

  The ‘structure’ was a vehicle of some description with rust streaked corrugated sheets laid over it and around its sides. The early morning chill had revealed the ruse.

  “Zero One, roger…any evidence of SAMs that you can see?” Her ECM was silent, showing no radar activity that suggested the presence nearby of AAA.

  “Zero Two, negative, just the fake hen house.”

  “Zero One, okay, take it.”

  “Roger…Fortune Cloverleaf this is Smackdown Zero Two coming in hot with two 250 pounders from the
southwest.”

  “Roger.”

  Nikki watched her wing man descend and begin his ordnance run, coming across the British armoured vehicles from their rear.

  Aboard Smackdown Zero One her ECM detected a SAM radar had come up and the ‘hen house’ suffered a structural defect as the vehicle rotated its turret towards the approaching F-14 Tomcat. It was no tank; it had two barrels, not one.

  The Type 59 SPAAG locked up the low flying F-14 and fired a long stream of shells from its auto flak cannons, both airburst and armour piercing rounds.

  Nikki saw the puffs of smoke from flak all around the other aircraft and the bright flash of striking rounds hitting its port wing. The wing and the fuselage parted company with the crew ejecting but the Tomcat had already begun a sharp roll to the right. Both seats, with their occupants still attached, hit the ground and bounced, spinning dizzily before crashing down into the field in a welter of flung earth.

  Zero Two’s killer reversed, ejecting smoke grenades to cover its retreat, magnesium and phosphorus providing a hot, IR defeating screen for a limited period. It encountered the cow field’s wooden fence and ground it beneath the steel caterpillar treads.

  Nikki rolled inverted and dived, selecting a 250lb retard bomb and calling in her intentions to the Irish Guards FAC.

  Having reversed behind the copse the Type 59 spun on its tracks and headed east. Its radar detected the diving F-14 and its turret rotated with remarkable speed, its twin 59mm cannons elevating but the US Navy aircraft was punching out chaff as well as flares, reducing its targeting options to that of ‘best guess’. Tracer rose to meet them, some exploded in their path and others, the armour piercing rounds, tore past like meteors.

  Candice let out a startled yelp as they were hit by shrapnel from the flak but she was pretty much the solid veteran now, forty sorties had taken place since that first mad scramble to get airborne at RAAF Pearce.

  They released their bombs but they were stick heavy as Nikki recovered, and the ground uncomfortably close.

  The FAC confirmed destruction of the self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicle but Smackdown Zero Two was visible to the right, burning at the edge of the field. One for one was a bad trade off; it was not a good start.

  Two miles north of Nowra, New South Wales. Same day, 0730hrs

  The abandoned township Cambewarra Village had been occupied and hurriedly fortified, stopping the Irish Guards again soon after they had overcome the first line of resistance. A further tank, a Hussars Mk 10 Chieftain, and three Warriors had been lost.

  2CG had hooked right, its vehicles threading their way through trees and on to Tannery Lane, chancing to luck and driving fast along a road straight enough to seem Roman in origin. Passing scattered dairy farms until reaching dead ground to the north of the Cambewarra hardpoint.

  1 Company’s Warriors crossed a small ford before crashing through fences and hedges into field to the right. 2 (Support) Company entered the stream and used its banks for cover. The Mortar Platoons FV432s halted in line, opened their top lids and pivoted the 81mm barrels to point in the direction of the Chinese position. They were close in and the elevation of the tubes was steep, pointing at the cloudless blue of the sky.

  1 Company were already reaching the edge of the village as 4 Company arrived and followed on in its wake. 1 Company may have been the old sweats, the veterans of the European unpleasantness with 1CG, but the weeks spent holding the Macquarie Pass had seasoned the remainder. Momentum can save lives when exploited at the right moment and no one dilly dallied.

  1 Company’s Warriors arrived in the residential streets, crashing through garden walls at the edge of the village where the guardsmen debussed and began the energy sapping job of FIBUA, fighting in built up areas, clearing it, house by house.

  3 Company flanked the village and the IFVs went into cover where they could put down fire on anyone leave its southern or eastern extremes.

  The fire into 1IG’s right flank was curtailed but they needed a breather so ‘The Micks’ went firm and 1 Welsh Guards passed through them and immediately into the assault.

  Tanks were burning, blown up or simply motionless with just a small penetrating hole in the armour plate. The enemy tanks had sallied forth to meet the approaching Warriors of the Welsh Guardsmen. Two companies worth of Type 98 tanks intended to slug it out with their opposite numbers but the air assets on call and the longer range of the British tanks 120mm rifled guns destroyed them. The day that had started badly was now improving.

  The Irish Guards first opponents had been the anti-tank platoon and a company of the 14th Infantry supported by a company of their 9th Tank. Having fought their way forward and defeated those enemy a second infantry company had ambushed the Irish Guards right flank from Cambewarra Village. 2CG were going to be digging the second company out of the village for another hour or two at least, after which they too would also need to reorganise.

  The Taff’s rifle companies were still fairly fresh, which was as well because a company of infantry and another of tanks remained defending Nowra.

  The 1st Guards Mechanised Brigade was just a half mile from its objective and 2nd Guards Mechanised Brigade now emerged onto the plain.

  Four hundred metres from the edge of Nowra Mark Venables Challenger was struck by a HESH round that failed to penetrate and Tango One One’s driver jerked the vehicle sharply right, and then back again to throw off the unseen shooters aim.

  Before them sat the outskirts, single storey residences set among the trees. Mark Venables spotted the movement first, a Pampas grass plant that rotated? It had lost some of its camouflage when it had first fired and it lost most of the remainder now as it fired a second time. The Challengers armour saved them again but One One shuddered to a halt, its engine stalled, leaving vulnerable and out in the open.

  Mark grabbed the override and slewed the turret around.

  “FIRING!”

  The Challenger rocked back on its sprockets as it fired, sending a tungsten steel sabot screeching across the intervening space. The last of the long grass stalks took flight and the hatches flew open. The crew began emerging as the first flicker of flame became visible and Mark switched to the 7.62 coaxial chain gun, the Chinese tank commander tumbled down the side of the turret and the gunner dropped down through the hatch, back into the flames. He lowered his aim but the driver had not been hanging about, he was off the vehicle and out of sight before the flames reached the ammunition and the tank blew up.

  One One’s own driver was trying to coax the big Perkins engine back into life without flooding it, and the rest of the crew felt the hairs on the back of their necks rise. Targets like they were presenting were just too good to pass up.

  The engine caught, roared, and they jerked forward again, heading for some cover.

  “Thank Christ for that boss.” his gunner stated with feeling. “I was…”

  A hammer blow struck the Challenger and flames engulfed the turrets interior.

  The Coldstreamers were still engaged in clearing Cambewarra and the sound of fighting from there was audible from where Pat Reed summoned the COs of 1IG and 1WG. A quick O Group and a quick reorganisation followed.

  The infantry who were cammed-up now divested themselves of flora and fauna, and hessian strips that broke up the shape of equipment. Fire was a very real by-product of house-to-house fighting so all unnecessary, flammable, items were removed. Oddly enough the section commanders sent out foragers to find thin, strong branches that were also straight and these were snapped into roughly 3’ lengths and brought along. Gaffer tape, PE4 or the nitro headache inducing PE808, guncotton charges, detonators, fuse cord and of course storm matches. The safest doorway into a defended building is one you make yourself, so the sections of branches and the gaffer tape create the ‘X’ frame on which a small charge of PE is likewise secured with gaffer tape to the tips of the upper arms. Placed against a wall and the fuse lit before retiring to a safe(ish) distance the charges blow ‘mouse holes’ big
enough to allow the assault team, the Entrymen, to enter once designated ‘grenadiers’ lob grenades inside. If those preparing the mousehole charges had PE808 to work with they wore gloves as they moulded the charges into shape. Nitro-glycerine from ‘808’ is absorbed through the pores and the immediate effects of the poisoning are the mother of all headaches.

  Grenades, rope, water and stones. A stone thrown into a room sounds the same as a grenade being thrown in and makes defenders take cover.

  The Irish Guards cordoned the north of Nowra as the south of the river received mortar and artillery fire to prevent reinforcement or retreat. With no further ado the Welsh Guards began the process of house clearing, FIBUA, fighting in built up areas.

  2nd Guards Mechanised Brigade moved past, heading east with A and C Squadron of the Hussars detaching themselves from Pat Reed’s brigade, along with a squadron of Scimitars from the Life Guards.

  The bridge across the wide Broughton Creek remained intact but the wooded Back Forest hill beside it was an obvious defensive position. It commanded both the bridge and the road to their objective, Shoalhaven on the coast. The Scimitars gave it some clog, intending to go firm once across the bridge but the defenders let the leading troop cross, waiting for the following troop’s commanders vehicle to reach the centre of the bridge before they blew it.

  In one fell swoop the Life Guards lost five vehicles. The troops which had crossed was hunted down by infantry with RPGs, and the second troop lost an additional vehicle on the bridge which did not reverse quickly enough to get out of range.

  It was five miles to the next crossing and that too was likely to be a trap.

  ‘Terry’ Thomas, commanding the 2nd Guards brigade, was calling forwards the Royal Engineers to survey the blown bridge, and banks, for the suitability of bridging units when a SASR patrol arrived with a solution. They had constructed a sunken bridge months before in order to move about unchallenged. It sat two feet below the surface and remained a secret from the enemy. It was a mile up river at a spot where dairy cattle had watered, before the Chinese had eaten them all of course. The only problem was a weight issue as only the Household Cavalry Scimitars were sufficiently light to cross without destroying the submerged structure. The 432s were twice the weight of the SASR six wheel LRPVs and of course the MBTs were obvious no-no’s.