‘Follow them’ shouted Sergeant Welsh. ‘But be careful.’
We wound down the windows, so we could position our rifles out, ready for any threat. The Viking slowly rolled around the corner, as another bridge came into view, this one was on our road as its route climbed over the river. But as we drew closer, there was a loud explosion, and a dust cloud engulfed the bridge, as bits of grit and debris rained down on our vehicle. Sergeant Welsh ordered us to exit the Viking, and clear the area. Keane went into an old factory, situated to our left, to get a better view of the situation. The dust cloud lingered for a few minutes, as we took position, and made sure there was nobody else around. I could hear shouting and movement over the other side of the bridge, but couldn’t identify anything. The bridge had been blown up, destroying two thirds of it, leaving only a three foot concrete arch, with a torrent of water cascading past. We couldn’t continue forward in the Viking, so we left it and moved into cover. A couple of rifle bursts fired over our heads, and we ducked behind the wall, and returned fire. This continued for around twenty minutes, until Keane got his eye in, and hit one of the fighters.
‘He’s down’ shouted Keane. ‘The others are heading into the mill.’
‘Are there anymore outside?’ Sergeant Welsh shouted.
‘Not that I can see.’
‘There were two of them on the bridge.’
‘I saw maybe five around the mill, I’ve wounded one, and the others ran inside. Get everyone across, I’ll cover them. Be careful though, it wasn’t a fatal shot, I can see him moving.’
One by one, we carefully walked along the remains of the bridge, with the rushing river to our right, until all but Keane were across. The mill was a large three storey building, running parallel to the river, with a tall thin chimney, rising into the darkening sky. I could see movement in a few of the front facing windows, and it wasn’t long before we were shot at. Sergeant Welsh ordered us to lay down a base of fire on them, as he cleared the area directly in front of us. He moved forward towards the prone soldier, and I followed, as Keane arrived at the back of our group. Sergeant Welsh reached the wounded man, and started kicking him in the body, then shot him through the head, as he lay defenceless. He then turned and faced me, startled he had company.
‘He pulled a gun on me’ he said, answering a question I never asked. I didn’t respond, I just waited until the rest of the company arrived, with Sergeant Welsh eyeballing me the entire time. When we’d re-grouped, Sergeant Welsh ordered Keane to take position in the building opposite, as we attacked from two entry points. Welsh took Murphy, and they positioned themselves by the front doors, as Little D, Adrian and myself headed around the other side to enter from the back. I heard the explosion, as they breached the front doors, and then further explosions as they rolled a couple of grenades inside. The large factory doors at the back were missing, with the floor outside red with blood, and the remains of rotting bodies. The smell was atrocious, we had to cover our mouths and noses as we entered the building, with distant gunfire echoing around the old walls. Ahead of us were two small rooms on the left, and two on the right, with double doors at the end, opening up onto the mill floor, taking up the majority of the building. We checked each room individually, taking our time, as gunshot still echoed around us. The first room we entered had been used to house the females, before anything had happened to them. The conditions were awful, human excrement and vomit, covering the floors and walls, the smell was overwhelming. They had been kept like animals, waiting to be slaughtered. The second room was full of belongings, bags, purses, clothes, jackets, all items removed from these poor women before they died. The next room went back out into the cold, where the water wheel was positioned, using the strength of the river to give power to the factory. The fourth room was much the same as the first, where any females had been locked up to die, the feeling I got searching these rooms was one of real disgust, the lack of humanity shown by these humans was hard to understand. We could still hear the gun battle, and opened the doors into the main body of the mill, where we found Sergeant Welsh and Murphy pinned down just inside the building. There was a large stone arched furnace, under the mill chimney, in the centre of the mill. Here is where the females had died, bits of bodies were still covering the floor, entrenched into the fabric of the building, becoming part of the mill. The deep blood red had soaked into the concrete, the colour creeping up walls like fungus. There were two sets of stone steps up to the second floor, where Torriero’s men were putting up a strong resistances. Their position was above us, and only reachable by the steps, with Welsh and Murphy under fire by the first set. They were pinned down, as Torriero’s men were concentrating their fire on the gap at the top, that was too open for them to attack. Little D told us to follow him, as we sneaked unnoticed to the other steps to our right, and climbed them, stopping at the top where he took a moment to survey the area. There was around twenty yards between Torriero’s men and our position, and they had their backs to us, as they concentrated on our comrades. There was ten yards of stone walkway, with the room opening out, housing large industrial machines, and piles of coal and wood. It was all open, looking down on the floor below. We crept along the walkway, under the long open windows, to the edge of the room.
‘You take the guy on the left’ whispered Little D, looking at me. ‘Adrian, you take the guy on the right. I’ll take the two in the middle, nice and quiet, on my signal.’
The gunfire was intense, and they had no idea we were there, until we were on them. Adrian and I shot at our targets, as Little D killed his first man with a bullet to the head. The second guy turned around and dropped his weapon, putting his hands in the air.
‘Please don’t kill me, I was only doing what they told me to do.’
‘Get down on your face’ replied Little D. ‘And put your hands behind your back.’
The man lay down, as I kicked the weapons away and Sergeant Welsh and Murphy arrived at the top of the stairs. Sergeant Welsh didn’t offer us any thanks for handling the situation, instead choosing to swear at the unarmed man, and hover over him in a menacing manner. Two men were dead, and the guy Adrian had shot was wounded, and screaming for help.
‘Radio in for Keane’ said Little D. ‘We need a medic.’
‘We don’t need a medic’ snapped Sergeant Welsh. ‘We’re not wasting medical supplies on this piece of shit.’
‘We have been given orders to bring any enemy still alive back to the camp, under arrest’ said Little D, as Welsh pondered the situation.
‘In that case, if any of your comrades end up needing medical intervention, and we don’t have the means, it will be on you. Murphy, take the prisoner back to the Viking, and get Keane.’
Murphy left, as Adrian tried to calm the injured man down, who had been shot in the stomach, arm and shoulder.
‘Davis, do a sweep of the premises, make sure nothing has been missed’ shouted Sergeant Welsh, trying to impose his authority on the situation, and put Little D back in his place. Keane arrived and treated the injured man who had passed out with the pain, it was a serious injury and we’ll have to get him back to camp quickly for him to survive, he needed operating on. When Little D arrived back after sweeping the premises, Sergeant Welsh ordered us back to the Viking, where we would organise the destruction of the building.
‘You can carry the injured man Davis’ said Sergeant Welsh, still not happy about his authority being questioned. When we got back to the vehicle, Adrian had handcuffed Torriero’s man to the headrest on the back seat, and was looking through the medical supplies in the boot.
‘Have you searched the man for weapons Harper?’ Asked Sergeant Welsh.
‘No sir, I-’
‘You fucking incompetent clown, search him now.’
‘I don’t have any weapons’ stammered the man, trying to move from his position.
‘You sh
ut the fuck up’ Sergeant Welsh snapped back, pushing Adrian out of the way to look through the equipment in the boot.
‘How do I end up with the fucking no hopers’ said Welsh, under his breath but loud enough to be heard. Adrian looked over, and with a rise of the eyebrows, we understood each other. The injured man died before we had chance to treat him, his wound was too severe for our limited supplies. Welsh threw his body into the river, much to our disgust. When he arrived back, he started rummaging through our equipment, until he pulled out a bag containing the C4.
‘We’re going to bring a building down’ he said. ‘But first I want to burn it.’
He pulled the flamethrower out of the back of the Viking, and lay it on the grass. I looked around for Rhino for a few seconds, and Murphy, sensing my mistake, offered to take the flamethrower on his back. I helped him fasten it, as Sergeant Welsh called us all around the Viking bonnet. He drew a crude representation of the mill on a piece of paper, and marked six positions he wanted C4 placing, in order to bring the building down. He handed Adrian, Keane and myself two C4 packs each, and threw Little D a camera.
‘I need a before and after picture’ he laughed, before telling us to move out. It took around forty minutes for Murphy to complete his sweep of the mill, burning all traces of death the building was hiding. The smell of burning flesh and bones was noticeable from a hundred metres away, and the flames quickly took hold of the old building. While he was doing that, Keane, Adrian and I placed our C4 packs in the positions Sergeant Welsh had marked on his drawing, along the outside of the building, and the supporting walls. When we had finished, we walked back to the Viking as one, where we found Sergeant Welsh talking to the prisoner, who looked up as we arrived, I could see the relief in his blooded eyes.
‘What’s going on?’ Said Little D, suspecting we’d walked in on something we weren’t supposed to see.
‘I’ve been interrogating the prisoner’ Sergeant Welsh replied, a little miffed he was facing more questions.
‘Is that what you call it?’ Little D snapped back.
‘Have you got something you’d like to say Private Davis?’
Little D never responded to the question, they stood facing each other, until Keane interrupted the stand off to give Sergeant Welsh the remote detonator.
‘Right men’ said Sergeant Welsh, ‘Let’s blow a building up.’
We walked back over the bridge, one at a time, and stopped around a hundred yards from the mill, with a full view of the destruction. Sergeant Welsh detonated the C4, there was a loud crack and the building folded in on itself, letting gravity take care of business. Within seconds it was flat, the chimney came down across the river, causing water to spray ten foot in the air. We turned away as the dust cloud bellowed towards us, like a sandstorm. It crackled against our uniforms, as it whistled past us, leaving a thin layer of film on everything it touched.
‘Take a picture’ said Sergeant Welsh, as he walked past Little D, towards the Viking. ‘And we can be on our way.’
We left soon after, Little D and myself sat in the back with some of the equipment. We both had things on our mind, and wanted to speak about them, so we kept our voices low.
‘The guy who Welsh shot on the floor never pulled a gun on him’ I said. ‘I was right behind them. He was still crawling towards the mill, Welsh just kicked him unconscious and then executed him.’
Little D just nodded his understanding, but said nothing. He just closed his eyes and went to sleep. I think he knows what Welsh is about, he has him pegged, we all have him pegged. He’s not really the kind of sergeant we want as we approach this pivotal moment, he seems to have a different agenda than the rest of us. I’m not sure if there is any point speaking to the generals about this, they’re clearly happy with his results, irrespective of how he achieves them.
Chapter SIX
1/1/2028 - Time 21:20
I didn’t managed to get to sleep in the Viking, as we travelled through a large snow storm, that battered the vehicle with strong winds and hailstones the size of golf balls. During this time, I wrote up the details of ‘Operation Cannon Fodder’ at Higherford Mill, as the weather moved through a thousand variations. As we past Blackburn South, a radio message came through, that made everyone sit up to attention.
‘Spotter ID three, three, six. An offensive has been launched from Torriero’s camp, hundreds of vehicles heading towards the M621. Over and out.’
There followed a ten minute period, as the report was verified, and some of our spotters were quickly given new positions to take up. We all sat on the edge of our seats, listening as the army’s response took shape. It was thought around two hundred vehicles had left Leeds, we could roughly estimate up to four people per car, meaning there could be as many as eight hundred fighters on their way to Camp Blue. Latest reports placed the convoy passing Rochdale, following the M62 towards Manchester. The generals responded quickly by sending out two battalions, The Lancashire Fusiliers, Seventh and Ninth Battalions, believing they’d have the best understanding of the area. We were a member of the Seventh Battalion, comprising eight Lancashire based companies, and roughly four hundred soldiers. The Tangerine Company, The Riversiders Company, The Cod Army Company, The Latics Company, The Clarets Company, The Stanley Company, The Shrimps Company and Blue and White Company. But we were still seven miles from the rendezvous point, junction two on the M65 where the M61 joins the motorway, and in the middle of a snow storm. But if we were dealing with this weather, Torriero’s route must be travelling through the same storm, and we had a head start. The snow was sticking to everything it touched, making it hard to navigate, any obstacles in the road just blended into the white. The heavy snow stopped for a while, as the winds blew across the carriageway, creating further visual problems. The huge concrete structure carrying the M61 came into view through the snow ahead, we headed up the slip road on the left, to the large roundabout at the top, following vehicle lights. There we could see a blockade, covering the entire width of the carriageway, both sides, with busy soldiers running around organising the vehicles. We were waved over by a man, and Sergeant Welsh wound down his window to speak to him as we approached.
‘That’s Lieutenant Colonel Carter’ whispered Keane. ‘He’s commands both Lancashire Fusilier Battalions.’
I nodded my understanding, while realising I still had no real idea of the hierarchy within the army structure. I don’t think I had ever seen this man before, and he was commanding two battalions, of which Blue and White Company were a member of one. I remember Sergeant Davis explaining the military structure employed within the camp to me, as best he could after a few too many beers. He said it was unique to itself, with more rhyme than reason used to create the framework to work with. When soldiers of varying ranks and experience arrived, all from different barracks across the country, the generals pretty much let them organise themselves to start with, only changing it as more recruits were added, in preparation for war.
‘Nice of you to turn up Welsh’ said Lieutenant Colonel Carter, wiping the snow off his glasses. ‘The carriageway is now blocked, we are in the process of covering the two fields either side of the motorway, see the red break lights ahead? Follow them into the field, then get yourself set up.’
Welsh nodded, and put his window back up, as Murphy set off after the vehicle ahead. Lieutenant Colonel Carter looked around fifty, with short grey hair, almost completely shaved off, balding on the very top and glasses. He had a stubbly complexion, and a three inch scar from the right side of his nose, passing the edge of his mouth down to his chin. We drove past the blockade, as it was being finalised, the soldiers taking up positions and mounting their machine guns. In front of the vehicles I could see soldiers pulling out lines of stingers across the carriageway, as we followed the vehicle in front, down the opposite slip road, and into the field. There was an old farm building in the field we entered,
with a glow of light in its windows, and a large barn attached to the side. We continued past a row of vehicles, with more soldiers milling around them, towards another man, directing vehicles into position. We were lined up, the last vehicle in the row, with just fields to our right. We climbed out of the Viking, and started to unload the equipment out the back, as Sergeant Welsh spoke to the sergeant in the vehicle parallel, before giving out his orders.
Aftermath: The complete collection Page 47