by Andy Farman
“Take them on in before they catch their deaths…we’ll hold station here!”
The ocean was in a quarrelsome mood with the odd six-foot swell making the business of looking for anything in the water difficult, despite the light from overhead. The first person they saw in the water was that of a woman in uniform, Terry from Sligo saw her as a wave lifted her from a trough briefly and Liam went in the direction the compass said he had pointed. He had to jockey the engines to get close to her, as the wind was strong enough to have an effect on even their low profile. Adrian helped Terry pull her over the side and into the boat where they got to work on her, trying to get the seawater from her lungs and carrying out CPR. It was a hopeless task and she lay in the bottom of the boat staring through filmy eyes, the life having fled from them. Liam looked at the woman’s nametag and the gold oak leaf on the epaulettes of her uniform shirt from his seat behind the Lifeboats helm; it matched the colour of the wedding band on her ring finger. “It’s a sorry time coming in the Pebanet household today,” he muttered to the wind.
They found two more bodies in the water by looking for the lamps on their life vests, and the helicopters were also busy, their lights picking out the shapes below and their divers went down on the hoists to recover them on litters.
Liam decided that they were too overloaded and should take their sorry cargo to the minesweeper, unload and return once more, so he turned the boat away from all the activity and opened the throttles some more. After no more than a minute or so, to Liam’s utter disgust the port engine missed, coughed and then fell silent. “Ah…you’re an awful contraption and that you are…an’ after the sweet words and flattery I’ve been heaping on you too!” He brought the bow around to point into the waves and throttled back, intending to open the engines casing long enough to give it a blast of WD40 in the carburettor and a hefty rap with a spanner.
Nancy had expended all the air from her lungs and still not reached the surface. The bulky mass of the aircraft had her trapped in its sinking wake, but she didn’t know this, she did know that she needed air or she would die. In desperation she fought back the instinctive urge to open her mouth and gulp, instead she pulled the toggle on her life vest, breaking the fatal hold the aircraft had on her as the vest inflated and carried her upwards.
She broke the surface and gasped at the precious air as a wave rolled over her. Salt water burned her sinuses and throat; she choked on the water, coughed and spluttered to evict it, in order to take in oxygen.
Each time a wave lifted her she waved an arm and shouted toward the lights, but the wind and the noise from the helicopters rotors drowned her pleas.
The cold was like a living thing, sapping her strength and her will as it first seeped into her limbs, and then her brain.
She didn’t know at what point she slipped from reality and into a dream world, but the warmth of the summer sun in Montana replaced the all-pervading cold of the Atlantic. She was hiking with her parents and brother again in the holidays before she started high school, tramping across the wooded hills of Glacier National Park. The scent of pine and wild flowers was heavy in the air along with the heavy drone of insects. She paused on the trail when she caught sight of a deer amongst the trees; the deer was motionless, staring right back at her. It was a magical moment that she had spoiled the first time by calling out to her family what she could see, and the deer had bolted. This time however her brother hadn’t shouted at her to leave the deer alone and catch up, he grabbed her by her pigtails and pulled hard. That in itself was very strange, because she knew for a fact she’d never worn her hair that way.
The light from Liam’s own lamp caught the pale face as it drifted just beyond the stern of the Galway lifeboat. He saw the pasty white face and blue lips, and took it for another dead body until the lips moved, mouthing, “Look at that!” He leant forward to grab her by an arm but she was drifting out of reach and he caught a handful of long dark hair instead. Taking a firm hold he pulled the body in to the side of the boat where he and Terry lifted her inboard where Terry felt for a pulse.
“We’ll be needing a helicopter, she has a pulse …but it’s terrible weak.” He pulled open a space blanket, wrapping it around the figure in the water-logged USAF uniform, and activated chemically heated hot bags which he placed atop her torso whilst Liam called in one of the S-61s to airlift her to hospital.
West of Wuitterlingen, Germany: 0550hrs, same day.
There was only a light powdering of snow on Nikoli’s Gortex bivi bag when he emerged into the pre-dawn with a full bladder. He had a Bergen and an arctic ‘maggot’ beside the bivi bag, which were not of Russian issue but British. All the items were at least second-hand when he had acquired them, but they were of superior quality to that which his troops had to make do with. Since arriving back from the UK the kit had earned a few envious glances, but he had brought back to the Red Army something else acquired from the British, it ensured that if his men couldn’t get out of the wind, rain and cold, then neither did he. He didn’t eat until his troops had done so, and he did not practice the Russian military class system. The one senior NCO who had displayed the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ attitude had found himself doing every shitty job that had needed to be done, and a few that hadn’t. By the time he had been promoted to Captain after the Leipzig operation, everyone in the Regiment had heard of his unusual command style. It made him a popular, yet respected figure with the junior ranks, and one viewed with an element of suspicion by the more senior ones, as someone who’d ‘gone native’ whilst in the West. Only one of his peers had taken it upon himself to criticise Nikoli to his face, and that individual was still baffled by his reply.
“My heart pumps purple piss, hinney…now sod off before I back squad yer teeth to Week One!” Nikoli had said in an appalling attempt at a Geordie accent.
As he watered the side of a tree this morning he looked around at the position. All his men were below ground level in shell scrapes spread about in a roughly triangular position; he had instigated its use, dispensing with the established Russian circular orientation. A machine gun sat at each of the three points, so an attacker coming from any direction would have at least two of them, plus two thirds of the units rifles to contend with. It wasn’t a Russian invention, it wasn’t British or American either, but Australian. The ‘Iron Triangle’ had been proven when a company from 1RAR, 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, had found itself surrounded by almost a regiment of regular troops from the NVA, North Vietnamese Army, on 8th January 1966 near Cu Chi, in an area known as the Ho Bo Woods. Several other factors had leant a part in the Australians successful defence; the personal weapons carried by the Australians were the GPMG and the SLR, which used the same calibre ammunition, the heavy 7.62 round. The SLR was self-loading but did not have an automatic fire capability, so the infantrymen only fired single, aimed shots; there was none of the extravagant expenditure of ammunition that was the norm with US troops who used the M-16. The Australian troops had received no significant ammunition resupply during the action, although about 6000 rounds of belted ammunition in boxes had been dropped, quite literally, through the tree canopy to them from a helicopter that just happened to be passing and heard a short range radio message toward the end. The Aussie troops had carried everything in with them, in their webbing pouches and packs. The gimpies had run low on belted ammunition, and this had been solved by the riflemen contributing some of their spare 7.62 ball. The gun groups emptied the rounds from the SLR magazines tossed to them and made up fresh belts using links from already expended belts that lay in heaps below the guns. It was not a practice that could have been duplicated by an American unit who’s M-60s and M-16s used incompatible calibre ammunition. The Australians had been unable to call in artillery or air strike as the one radio with the range to reach anyone friendly was an early casualty. The NVA had tried both infiltration and human wave tactics from most points of the compass, but the Australians had dug in and held. When the NVA had withdrawn
nine hours later, they left over two hundred of their number behind, the boys from Oz lost eight dead and twenty-nine wounded.
Nikoli had not learnt of that battle in a Russian military school, but whilst sat at the back of a classroom in Brecon during one of CSM Probert’s lectures. Colin had ended that particular lesson by pointing out that a single hit from an SLR, even on a limb, would put the recipient out of action due to the stopping power of the 7.62mm round. The M-16 on the other hand had to be altered by the US servicemen, quite illegally, in order to make its lighter round tumble, to achieve something close to the same effect. This affected its range, which was not a great problem if in the jungle, and its accuracy, which was. With a wry smile he had held up an SA-80. “And guess which round this thing uses.”
It irked Nikoli that Colin had bested him, not once but twice now. The village had been taken far quicker than he would ever have expected, and then at the copse, his plan to embroil the enemy battalion in at least a two company, and time consuming action, had failed because the Guards warrant officer had seen through it. Well, the decision had now been taken to withdraw to brigade lines, so they would not be locking horns with each other again.
Dawn was approaching, and now was the time to pack everything away and be ready to face a dawn attack, if one were to come. The paratrooper captain did up his flies and went back toward his own shell scrape, once there he tugged rapidly on the communications cords.
USS Gerald Ford Battle Group, 546 miles SSW of Greenland: 0600hrs, same day.
Conrad Mann’s flagship, the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, sat on the south side of a warship screen around forty-eight merchant ships.
A sizeable chunk of his command, twice the size in numerical terms than in peacetime and now spread over twenty-five square miles of ocean, came from the USN Reserve fleet. He had relatively few ‘modern’ warships that were purpose built for dedicated tasks such as ASW or air defence. Financial restraints placed on the armed forces had led to a breed of ‘multi-role’ hulls that the politicians thought sounded sexy. The difference between an air defence destroyer, and a multi role destroyer, was that the multi role could only carry half the munitions and half the trained personnel for either role. In the Pacific the multi-role ships that had met the Chinese head on were either on the bottom, or only existed now as highly irradiated dust. Off the North Cape the dedicated anti-aircraft ships that had survived the mass attacks had only done so by carrying far more munitions than they were designed to do. So the admiral had confidence that although the Reserve Fleet ships may lack the latest upgrades, they were in no way ‘second best’. Conrad Mann was personally very concerned that before the war the United States had no plans to replace its present frigates, once decommissioning of individual ships took place at the end of their planned lives. With luck and a little common sense, that decision would undergo some serious reconsideration.
The previous evening his battle group had joined with the merchant ships, come about and carried out a RAS, replenishment at sea, of all the usual items. Taking a leaf from the North Cape task force, they had taken on additional air defence stocks and the Health and Safety officer had taken a Valium, there was so much explosive ordnance lining the passageways of the warships.
As the ships sailed east once more Admiral Mann cast his eyes over the list of supplies they had taken onboard the Gerald Ford. Although budgetary concerns were no longer something he had to fret over, he was still seriously pissed after looking at the figures in the right hand column, and put in a call to Henry Shaw on the generals mobile phone.
HMS Illustrious ASW Group. 210 miles south of the Faeroe Isles.
Since her Sea Harriers had flown off to join the North Cape Task Force, the flight deck of the Royal Navy warship had seen steady but not excessive flying activity.
The Type 42 destroyer, HMS Edinburgh was a mile to the north, whilst the Type 22 ASW frigates HMS Sheffield, HMS Cumberland and HMS Campbeltown held a triangular formation seven miles out with the carrier at the centre. The base of the triangle faced the direction the threat would come from, the north. The nearest neighbours to the carrier were the fleet replenishment ship and the oiler, Fort George and Oakleaf, the groups supermarket and filling station.
Four elderly Sea Kings had arrived three days ago from Scotland via the Faeroes to supplement her compliment of Merlins, and the technicians had immediately had to ground them. The private contractors charged with their storage and upkeep in the UK had apparently been claiming a lot of money from the taxpayers whilst failing to meet the maintenance requirements.
The Captain of Illustrious had been planning on keeping his men rested until they came within range of the soviet submarine force, but his engine, airframe and electronics technicians had been working around the clock to get the aircraft in a fit state to do the job expected of them. When he had fired off his report on the matter to the MOD, he couldn’t help wondering which Minister and official’s had shares in the maintenance company, under assumed names of course, taking advantage of the legal loophole in British law that permitted the practice, and one that successive governments had refused to close. He had to wonder about the integrity of such people who would not only fight to retain such a thing, but also remove the independence of the only department set up to tackle corruption within government, because it was doing its job too well.
Flurries of snow were gusting across the flight deck as he watched two Merlins and a Sea King spool up. The frigates each carried a pair of Sea Lynx helicopters, and the destroyer carried one. They were putting up half of their sub hunting aircraft now, and a four hours on, four off rota was commencing now that the enemy was confirmed as having got past the NATO hunter killer submarines. It was still pitch dark and the ships were steaming west, but once the dawn came they would turn north with the aim of bringing the enemy force to battle.
West of Wuitterlingen, Germany: 0615hrs, same day.
The Russian paratroopers of Nikoli’s small command lay quietly in their shell scrapes; all kit packed away and ready to move. They watched their assigned arcs, waiting for the dawn and watching for movement. Last light and first light are the times when human eyes are at their least efficient, they don’t recognise shapes as well and are most likely to miss movement in the half-light.
It had been the first night without more snow since they had jumped into Germany, for the second time. Nikoli rolled over onto his back and looked up through the skeletal branches at the sky, and to his surprise saw stars through breaks in the cloud cover. For days now the clouds had blocked out the heavens, drenching the landscape with almost constant rainfall before the temperature had dropped further, and rain turned to snow.
Against backdrop of stars, a cluster of fast moving objects with fiery tails caught his attention briefly before the cloud barred his view.
Sgt Osgood raised his head to check that all his men had their own heads tucked below the level of the ditch they’d hunkered down in, four hundred metres from the woods edge.
Guardsman Robertson and his oppo Aldridge, the would-be sex machines of Tyne and Weir, were peering over the top, hoping to see a fireworks display when the MLRS sub munitions arrived.
“I’m going to come over there and mallet you two if you don’t get yer swedes down, right now!” Like tortoises under threat, their heads vanished from sight. Oz took another moment to reassure himself that there were no other defaulters in his platoon, before settling down next to Colin Probert.
“How accurate are these things they’re lobbing over anyway?”
“The Gunners think they’re hot stuff, dead accurate, surgically precise examples of modern military technology…our lords and masters have full confidence in their abilities.” Colin murmured.
“Is that why we’re a half mile from the target, and hiding in a ditch?”
"Too right mate!” Colin chuckled. “Never rely on the safety assurances of someone in an office, a hundred miles away from the site of a pre-planned explosive eve
nt.” His earpiece came to life; the company commanders transmission cutting off any further whispered banter.
“Hello all stations One, this is One Nine, DRURY LANE…out!”
“Here it comes, boys and girls!”
There was a series of high-pitched cracks in rapid succession from high overhead, up above the clouds, and then silence.
The last time Oz had been on a battlefield when this weapon had been used was on the Wesernitz. He had been up to his nuts in muck and bullets at the time, and hadn’t known the MLRS had taken out an entire enemy regiment until after the battle. The constant scream of incoming mortars and shells, explosions and small arms fire had drowned it out.
“Is that it?” he whispered to Colin, somewhat disappointed. The roar of thousands of explosions, lasting several seconds but seeming much longer, drowned Colin’s answer out.
“As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted.” Colin repeated once it was over. “It sounds a bit like a shed load of firecrackers going off in the distance.”
“Yeah right…firecrackers the size of shit-house doors!”
Colin was peering over the top of the ditch at the large mass of trees, where it was apparent that something other than wood and rabbit droppings inhabited the target area. There were several secondary explosions, and small arms ammunition was cooking off in one of the fires, the glow of them showed in the fading darkness.
They both ducked involuntarily as first one pair and then a second pair of fighter-bombers screamed overhead, heading for the fires and secondary’s. Neither soldier saw the aircraft drop their ordnance, but fire boiled up above the treetops, and the whiff of petrochemicals reached then on the breeze.
“I love the smell of…” began Oz, as he started to recite the line from the film, but Colin cut him off abruptly, drawing his bayonet and wrapping the blade against his helmet to draw attention.