“I understand,” said Fedorov. “But the British will be close on the heels of the Germans when they get here.”
“True enough,” said Popski. “But that road along the river is easy to hold. The escarpments to the west restrict any good ground for movement to a nice little bottleneck. Jerry can set up shop there and post small delaying forces that could hold our lads up a good long while.”
“Don’t forget Brigadier Kingstone’s column is to the south,” Fedorov reminded. “He’s well inland from the river approach, and chances are he may get here first.”
“That would be much desired,” said Popski, though he had real misgivings. “That’s hard ground south,” he said quietly. “Wouldn’t want Kingstone to get lost out there, would we?” He gave Fedorov a knowing eye, and his point was well made.
That was the real question, thought Fedorov. Could the British get here with enough force in time? Would this be just another futile holding effort, waiting for relief that might never arrive? And how many men might we lose here tomorrow if we do try to hold? I’m counting on Kingstone’s flying column, but Popski is correct. It may never get here. Should I go up with the KA-40 and look for him tonight? Perhaps we could air ferry some of his troops here?
The falling sun was soon driving the first shadows of the evening in on his troubled thoughts and, just after dusk, the pilot of the KA-40 reported he had airborne contacts on radar from the south.”
“From the south?” Fedorov thought they might be British planes out of Habbaniyah, but he was wrong. The first appearance of the enemy would not come by the river road, or the thin tracks that led west to Aleppo, or north to Turkey. It would come from the flights of JU-52s that Ramcke had managed to collect for his recon battalion, and it was coming that very moment.
“We’d better get a couple X-3s up,” he suggested, and Popski ran off to Lieutenant Ryan to raise the alarm. Soon the fitful whirl of the sleek rotors was clouding the field with blown dust, and two helos rose into the gathering darkness like shadowy birds of prey. Some minutes later they saw the missiles in the air, the first bright explosion and fire of a kill, and they knew the fight was joined. The low drone of aircraft engines sounded hollow, and Fedorov pinched off his collar microphone to signal Troyak on the high ground overlooking the airfield, even as a second explosion ripped the darkness on the near horizon. The killing had started.
“Sergeant Troyak,” he said. “Get your men ready. They’re coming.”
* * *
Ramcke was some time getting his men together to see what he had left after the chaotic night drop in the desert northwest of the town. His engineer platoon was nowhere to be found, most likely on the first plane to be hit. Of the 162 men that had boarded the planes, he was able to account for only 96 in that first hour on the ground. He had a mixed force to begin with, mostly the recon platoons plucked from the Regiment’s companies for this special mission, and re-designated the Luftland Sturm Recon Battalion, a formation that had never existed prior to his deployment here. In spite of the name, his platoons really only amounted to a good reinforced company when they set out, and now he had apparently lost a third of his force in the wild night drop.
Oberleutnant Jung’s Platoon had come through unscathed, and Altman’s Platoon was well accounted for. Hoefeld’s pioneers were missing to a man, and Schulte could only present with twelve men from his platoon. Reinhardt had collected his men from the 8th Schwere Company, which was all the heavy firepower they would have that night, three heavy machine guns and three 81mm mortars, half of what that company was authorized to carry. The rest were gone, or lost in the darkness somewhere. He would not really know the score until sunrise, but there was no time to wait on the dawn. He had to get his men assembled and into that town, or up on that high ground overlooking the place, and that was what he set out to do. He found Feldmann and his Brandenburgers, all intact with a group of twenty men.
“Alright, Feldmann. You were so confident just a moment ago. What was in your damn reports about those new British rockets? I’ll be lucky to have a hundred men alive here after that attack.”
Feldmann gave him a disparaging look, clearly shaken by the experience of the night drop, though his morale was undaunted. “Let me take my men into the town,” he said. “You’ll want those hills as soon as possible. He pointed to the knobby high ground overlooking the place, his eyes still darkly scanning the sky when they heard a distant thrumming sound.
“What was that aircraft?” Ramcke asked. “Did you see anything when you jumped?”
“Just the toes of my boots,” said Feldmann. “The ground came up much too fast.”
“I got a glimpse of something, but it wasn’t a British fighter plane. What is going on here, Feldmann? Tanks that can smash right through a panzer division, rockets launching from ships and planes—where did the British get these weapons? What has the Abwehr been doing for the last year? Why haven’t we heard about any of this?”
“I would like to tell you I know everything Herr Oberst,” said Feldmann, adjusting the strap of his sub-machinegun. “But my pockets are not quite big enough.”
“Well,” said Ramcke, “no one expects you to carry the whole world in your pockets, Feldmann, just a good bit of what we might be facing here would be sufficient. In another hour we’ll see what we have in front of us. Then we deal with anything you may have overlooked.”
He turned to a Sergeant and ordered the men to assemble by squads. “That hill,” he pointed to the shadow in the distance. “I want a recon team there at once. Hold three squads ready to assault. If the British have commandos here, they will not have overlooked the importance of that ground. Tell Reinhardt to get his mortar teams ready, and that will likely be his first target. I will follow Feldman to the edge of the town and set up my command post there. Send runners as soon as you can sort the situation out.”
The men moved now with well practiced urgency. This was what they had trained for, their stock in trade. For some it had been their third or fourth combat jump of the war, survivors of Holland, Malta and Cyprus. Ramcke watched them move, hefting their weapons and ammunition, tightening the straps of their characteristic helmets, lacing up a loosened boot. They were ready to fight, he thought, and woe betide the British tonight.
He looked to Feldmann, seeing the man nod and salute as he led his Brandenburgers off towards the town. “I will keep you informed, Herr Oberst,” he said over his shoulder with a wink. “This will not take long.” His irrepressible smile followed, and he was off, the black uniformed Brandenburgers following in a smart line that was soon swallowed by the night.
Ramcke put his hands on his hips, watching his unit unfold, the squads fanning out, harangued by the hard commands of the other officers and Sergeants. The men moved on instinct, a reflex for war and combat that was well honed. Perhaps Feldmann is correct, he hoped. After all, how many commandos could the British have here, twenty, fifty? He had made a very good guess, but his thoughts were still harried by that shadow he had seen slipping into the clouds, and the searing fire of those rockets that had taken down three of his nine planes.
We must get to that airfield, he knew. That is where those fighters must have come from, and that must be my principle objective here. I am told the 7th Machinegun Battalion is coming from Aleppo. When will they arrive? Don’t count on them doing your work for you, he chided himself. The airfield is north of the river, and the main road to Aleppo is to the south of that barrier. The 7th will have to take one of the two bridges if they want to get into the town, so all the real objectives of worth beyond that are mine for the moment.
Time to get busy.
Chapter 6
Troyak saw the Germans coming on his night vision goggles. He was noting the movement of the men carefully, seeing them deploy, luminous green shapes in the eerie dark. A recon team and three squads in waiting, he noted. He gave a quiet hand signal to his fire team, just five men here on the high knob of Hill 272, and another five under Zykov on H
ill 264 to the northwest. Neither team was adequate to the task it had been given, but at least he had men on both hills, which was better than yielding one to the enemy without a fight.
Yet when he saw the forces deploying below, he knew his five man team was going to be easily flanked. They simply could not cover all angles and approaches to the hilltop, so he immediately called for Chenko to bring up his team from the airfield and cover the ground between the two knobs.
His own grim prediction was soon to be proven true. The Germans moved in Altmann’s platoon, along with all the men in Reinhardt’s Schwere platoon, which had assembled to support this attack. Troyak could see them moving, and settling into depressions in the ground below, and he instinctively knew what he was looking at. They were selecting good firing positions for any heavy weapons they might have, and once he had allowed the enemy to settle on ground of its choosing, he called Popski at the airfield.
“We’ll be under attack soon,” he said. “They’ll probe my position first, and pay for that, but they’ll follow with mortar fire soon after. I’ll send you a grid position for our mortar team. Are the helicopters ready?”
They were.
Two of the three X-3s were revving up again to provide fire support that Troyak believed would be the decisive edge here. The third X-3 had departed south to reconnoiter the German advance, and pick up more fuel from their operating base. They would use only half as much as they could carry by making the flight down and back to the T3 Pump station, and so for the moment their airborne fire support was limited, though even one X-3 was a formidable addition to his firepower here.
On Troyak’s order the Podnos 82mm mortars opened the game, the first rounds whining in to fall on the German positions below. He could see the men reacting as they should, going to ground, yet still advancing under any cover they could find. They know enough not to get stuck under that fire, he thought. These are well trained men, and they’ll outnumber us three to one or better for this first engagement. No matter. We have the firepower to stop them here.
His confidence was not unwarranted. Just as the enemy began to answer with their own 5cm and 8.1cm mortars, the first of the X-3s was up and over their position, quickly finding the enemy mortar teams and moving to attack. The hiss of the rocket pods soon followed, and would be a hard shock to the Germans when the missiles hit home.
The Hydra 70 had an old pedigree, developed from plans laid down for a distant cousin in the late 1940s after the war. The Mark 40 was a fin folding unguided aerial rocket made by the U. S. Navy, serving in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the newer Hydra 70 had the same simple design. The Navy was now deploying a guided version using lasers, but the X-3s had the older rockets, all unguided, but with a good 8 kilometer strike range. They had two seven tube pods mounted that day, which could use single or ripple fire to engage targets. Unguided or not, the optics on the X-3 were going to get the missiles where Lieutenant Ryan and his sidekick Tom Wicks wanted them, and that was right on the three 81mm mortar positions in Reinhardt’s Schwere platoon. They put three missiles on each position, getting all three mortars and then angling to look for other targets of opportunity.
“Good shooting Tommy!” said Ryan when he saw the results.
“Always aim to please,” said Wicks in return. “What’s that yonder at about three-o-clock?”
Ryan pivoted his X-3, the powerful high resolution optics and cameras painting the ground where Wicks was pointing. He could clearly see the Germans deploying another weapon, and then it fired, sending a round out toward the high ground that smashed into the shoulders of the hill.
“Looks like some kind of Recoilless Rifle. Take it down, Wicky.”
“Right-O, LT.” Wicks fired, three more rockets snaking in to the target in short order. The resulting explosions blasted the weapon, sending it careening up and away from its original firing position.
“A good hard knock, Tommy.”
“That’s why they call me Tommy Knocker,” said Wicks. “Shall we give them a taste of the minigun?”
* * *
Troyak saw the rockets go in with lethal accuracy, and soon after the snarl of the minigun raked the ground below. It fell on the men of Reinhardt’s platoon, inflicting heavy casualties where they scrambled on the relatively open ground. The Germans had finally recovered from the shock and were now directing machinegun fire at the helo, forcing Ryan to bank and climb away from the scene. But the job had been done, and the heavier support weapons in the Schwere platoon had been taken out, as Troyak expected. Now it would come down to guts and small arms fire, but the Russians had plenty of both, and now possessed the heavier mortars, the Germans having no more than a single light 5cm tube in each platoon.
Over on Hill 264, Zykov watched the battle begin with a big grin on his face. While a part of him whispered that the fight was unfair, offering due respect to the Germans who had to face their modern weaponry and firepower, the greater part sided with that grin. When men were out there with rifles, and coming to kill you, then any advantage on your side was welcome without scruples or any regrets. He knew that the enemy would hit them with any weapon they had, and so the Russians would do the same, no questions asked.
In that passing moment, he thought of Captain Karpov, the hard fighting commander of the ship through so many battles at sea. Karpov knew what Zykov accepted as a matter of course. You hit the enemy hard, knock him down, and if he gets up to fight again, then that’s your fault. That was the cold rationale of war, and every warrior subscribed to it on one level or another.
* * *
When the X-3’s climbed they suddenly saw something on the ground to the west, and Ryan veered in that direction. “Argo Leader, this is X-1 overwatch. Be advised of a truck column north of the river and inbound on your position, over.”
“Copy on that, X-1. Care to form the welcoming committee?”
“Will do, Argo Leader. Ryan out.”
The column Ryan had spotted were the first arrivals of the German 7th Motorized Machinegun Battalion, dispatched to this position some time ago by the division commander, von Sponeck. They had driven all day and into the night to reach Raqqah. One company had found a bridge just barely able to support the weight of the trucks, and with a little shoring up from the engineer platoon, they made it across. The rest of the battalion was on the main road south of the river, which would lead to the better bridges now being held by the Argonauts.
Ryan decided to have a look around, signaling the other X-3 to scout south and then rejoin his bird over the river. They soon began to piece together a picture of the gathering fight, as all forces in the region were now sending troops to this place, marching to the sound of the guns. Due south, they spotted what looked to be another German force at first, but when Ryan reported the movement to Popski, the gritty Colonel simply smiled.
“No Germans will be coming out of that desert,” he said. “Take another look. That has to be Kingstone’s flying column up from Palmyra.”
It was.
The first elements of this scout force were arriving with the fast moving motorized cavalry units. Glubb Pasha had scouted the way, and was also leading in a detachment of his Arab Legion. This force would soon run afoul of the advancing companies of the 7th Machinegun Battalion south of the river, and another small action would begin there in the pre-dawn hours.
In the meantime, Ryan was rejoined by the other X-3 helo, designated X-2 for this mission, and together they applied the same deadly medicine to the oncoming truck column north of the river. The Hydra 70’s took out the lead truck, stopping the column in its tracks as all the infantry spilled out and bled onto the ground around the trucks, looking for cover. Wicks shot up two more trucks, and then the minigun took its pound of flesh out of the column, raking the snake’s back with its snarling bite.
The Germans were stunned by the attack, as it seemed that lightning was simply flashing out of the sky at them. They could hear some kind of aircraft overhead, the hard thump of
the rotors and growl of the helo engines, but they could not see the beasts that were gouging them now. After those first moments of shock and awe, the Germans soon reacted by opening up with every machinegun they had, nine MG-32s in this single company, and they were raking the sky in all directions, the hot tracer rounds streaming up like a fountain of molten lead.
“That’s done it,” said Wicks.
“Good enough, Tommy,” said Ryan. “Let’s get round to the south along the river and see what’s there.” He knew that was the main axis of the German retreat from Dier ez Zour, and the helos swept across the river, overflying the budding meeting engagement between Kingstone’s men and the other two companies of the 7th Machinegun battalion. Off to the southeast, they soon saw another long line of an advancing column. A motorcycle platoon led the way, followed by what looked to be a full battalion of motorized infantry, the first arrivals of the 65th Regiment.
“How many rockets left in those pods, Wicky?”
“I fired four salvoes of three, so I’ve only got one left in each pod,” said Wicks. “Time for a reload, but we’ve still got the minigun.”
“Aye, two rockets won’t do much good here. There will be more behind this lot too, but it’ll be dawn before that column gets up north. Let’s hold what we’ve got and get back to the fight near the airfield.”
“What, and help the Russkies?”
“Our allies this time out me boyo, so see that you put those last two rockets on the Germans.”
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