by Andy Farman
There were four men manning the OP, all experienced soldiers and good at their job, which was staying out of sight and reporting on all enemy movement. The OP had been sited to observe where an enemy would ideally form up before an attack on their positions a thousand or so metres behind them. The only practical spot was at the bottom of an embankment, in an autobahn service's car park, which was out of sight of the Russian forward fighting positions, and accessed by a service road in dead ground.
If the paratroopers in the OP had made a mistake, it was in calling down artillery on the German troops and armour whilst they were in the service area.
German GSG9 troopers in their military role now, rather than anti-terrorist, had spent over a day in snipers ‘ghillie suits’ sniffing out the OP. In fairness to the Russians, they had been rather limited by the terrain in their choice as to where they could site the observation post. The OP was on its own; it did not have another post watching its back, so there were no Mk 1 eyeballs covering their ‘6’, just electronic ones. Small, telescopic masts that looked a lot like natural vegetation created a photoelectric fence that ringed the blind spot at the rear, where the OP could not see. The GSG9 troopers, who had discovered the masts knew the OP was nearby, and very carefully removed soil so as to create a man-sized gully, which allow them to crawl under the ‘fence’ and search beyond it. When the OP itself was found they placed several items on, and around it. For the past six hours’ every whisper the paratroopers made had been recorded, they knew the paratroopers names and the style of VP, voice procedure that they used on the field telephone. The Russians had radios and cellular phones, but the radios were not in use for security reasons and the cellular’s had no ‘whisper’ facility that would allow them to speak into them in hushed tones yet still be heard normally at the other end.
The Germans were now ready and had four men 100m from the OP, all of whom listened to the first shells pass overhead and waited for them to land on the enemy blocking position. As the sound of the detonating shells reached them, one of the troopers pressed the button on a small transmitter.
Four half-pound charges of PE, plastic explosive, blew off the OPs turf and earth roof and killed or seriously injured the occupants, who were in no position to resist when the GSG9 troopers sprinted up and emptied their G3 assault rifles magazines into them.
The Russians had buried their field telephone landline, it was now located and a German telephone attached in place of the now smashed Russian equipment.
With the OP neutralised, the first British armoured vehicles began arriving in the service area five minutes later, 3 (UK) Mechanised Brigade had been blooded in a defence posture, it was now about to go into the attack.
Orbiting at 49,000’ east of the autobahn junction, in the clear but moonless sky, Spirit One dropped its single item of ordnance and continued its circular track, as it 'lasered' the aiming point below. There was only one squadron of operational B2 bombers, and this was the unit of bat-like stealth bombers first mission of the war. NATO signals intelligence had been listening diligently for the Russian airborne division’s radio traffic, and found…silence. In order to get some kind of picture as to where the Russians were in the Leipzig area, they had to DF, direction find, their transmissions, as well as carry out ground and aerial recce’s. The answer to this apparent silence was quite simply that the enemy was utilising the cities still active cellular system by using mobile phones to communicate. In a city filled with people still using phones, but unable to phone outside the city, it was impossible to separate the chaff from the wheat.
The 2000lb laser guided ‘Bunker Buster’ would penetrate 60 feet below ground before detonating and destroying both cellular and landline communications, bringing down the thirty-two floors of the Leipzig telephone exchange at the same time. The Russian forces would have no option but to switch on their radios and NATO could then locate the transmitters, as well as make life generally difficult by jamming their transmissions.
In their fighting positions at the autobahn, the paratroopers exchanged glances as the NATO barrage continued beyond its usual hours’ worth. They were all tired from the lack of sleep that sixteen hours’ of shelling in the last twenty-four had brought. The company commander at the autobahn called his forward OP, a hand clamped to his free ear in order to hear above the noise of bursting shells, but was reassured by the answer he received. His command post was constructed of concrete rubble, and wooden fence posts removed from the nearby fields supported the roof, giving the occupiers roughly 4 feet of headroom. It would have been wide enough to hold four men, but two manpack radios occupied one side with their antennae’s poking up through the rubble roof. Vision was courtesy of a 6”x3” slit at the far end facing the expected threat. The ground trembled and bucked with the impacts, and shrapnel lashed the air. This barrage was keying up the troops to await an attack that may materialise, but so far none had. The enemy were indulging in psychological warfare with them, seeking to wear them down, reflected the company commander, it was working too. He replaced the handset and rolled to one side, lifting a nightscope to peer west along the empty autobahn.
The paratrooper who acted as the company commanders runner, orderly and general dogsbody, the all necessary ‘gopher’, was heating water for coffee in a mess tin. Because of the dust and grit that filled the air, he had a larger mess tin held over the filled vessel to keep the crap out of it, so his attention was on his present task. Two minutes later he poured the hot water onto coffee powder and crawled up the shelter to his officer, who appeared to be resting.
He did not see the broken glass until he put his weight on his left hand.
“Ubl'yudok!” Bastard, he cursed and set the mug in his right hand down, whilst he plucked the shard out. He hadn’t noticed the glass in the past couple of days, so he looked for the source and found a smashed nightscope. It was an instinctive reaction that made him look out through the vision slit, for the assumed shell crater that had been associated with the damaged scope. As his face came into view Big Stef put a round into one of his eyes as well, before changing his firing position and looking for more firing slits near radio antennae’s.
The full weight of the NATO guns focused on the junction for twenty minutes, and did not lift until the advancing Challengers and Warriors 120mm and 30mm cannon were taking the enemy strong points under direct fire, and the Guardsmen had deployed from the AFVs and began to skirmish forward in the assault.
Whilst the Coldstreamers two rifle companies led the assault on the Russian forward positions, the American paratroops followed on behind, where they could pass through the Guards and come to grips with their Russian counterparts in the depth positions beyond.
Mention ‘skirmishing’ to a British infantryman, and his eyes will not show wild enthusiasm. The infantrymen work in pairs, one will put down covering fire whilst his oppo rolls to one side, gets up and moves forward in a jinking run, drops, rolls again and puts down covering fire while his mate then moves up. The distance run is calculated by the time that it takes for a good opponent to select a target, aim and fire, which is about three seconds. You roll before getting up in case the enemy noted where you were firing from, and has drawn a bead on the spot, waiting for you to get up. You roll when you get down at the end of your forward rush, in case the enemy noted where you disappeared from sight and is waiting for you to stick your head up behind your weapon to commence covering fire. bergens are dropped before skirmishing takes place but it still leaves you carrying a hell of a lot of gear and it is absolutely knackering. It takes a fair few, three-second dashes to cover even a hundred metres.
A favourite way of the Brecon instructors to judge the quality of their latest batch of student’s is to get them into full NBC protective kit and skirmish them up the side of the Brecon Beacons. The exercise continues until the instructors can see the levels of vomit reach the bottom of the visors, inside the masks. The practice is best filed under ‘Character building’ in the filing cabinet of l
ife’s rich tapestry.
With the Warriors rapid firing 30mm cannon and the infantry gun group gimpy’s providing solid fire support, the Guards skirmished to within yards of the Russian positions. Section commanders kept their men on the ground there briefly by holding up a fresh magazine and a bayonet, which were then placed on the elderly but reliable SLRs. Since British infantry first formed line and fixed bayonets a few hundred years ago, they have been regarded as the best at wielding a weapon tipped with sharp metal fashioned in Sheffield, and with a bit of guts behind it too, of course.
Almost winded by getting that far, apprehensive at probably never having done this before for real, the Guardsmen closed the gap between themselves and their enemy, still skirmishing but now only kneeling to fire.
“Don’t bunch!” screamed the section commanders at their riflemen, as they started to gang up on enemy positions, making themselves easy targets for machine guns. The section commanders were also looking over their shoulders at the rear and holding up clenched fists, the signal for their gun groups. Now that the riflemen were too close for the gunners to safely continue providing cover, they needed to be brought up. Once the gun group commanders acknowledged the signal, the commanders pointed at where they now wanted them. The ‘number one’, the gunner, carried out a rapid make-safe of the gun, snapped the belt of linked ammunition about thirty rounds down and made off at a dead run with the gimpy inverted and reversed on his shoulder. The number two and the gun group commander bringing up the boxes of linked, the bags containing spare barrels and the cleaning/tool kit.
The L1A1 SLR is a semi-automatic, gas and spring operated, self-loading rifle, which means it is not an automatic weapon, but there is always a round ready to go provided there are rounds in the magazine. The longer length, 44.5” was more suited than the carbine sized SA-80 for bayonet fighting, and the Guardsmen now used it to take cold steel to the Russians with gusto and a roar. Grenades did not always precede the way, there were plenty of suitably sized lumps of rubble to hand to encourage the enemy to quit their fire trenches and meet the British above ground when these ‘grenades’ landed at the feet of the trenches occupants.
An SLR has a distinctive metallic ringing undertone when it is fired; rapidly expanding gases propel the bullet up the barrel, where half way along some of the gases find an aperture. Still expanding, the gases are channelled by the groove in the gas plug and encounter the head of a spring-loaded piston, which is forced back by the pressure. The foot of the piston in turn pushes back the breech block and slide that compose the working parts, continuing even after the hinged tail at rear of the working parts encounters the head of the return spring in the rifles butt. As the working parts move back, an extractor lug ejects the spent case out of the right side of the weapon. Once the gases have pushed the piston all the way to the rear, a vent is uncovered and the gases dissipate, allowing the return spring to push the working parts forward again, collecting a fresh round from the magazine as it does so and pushing it into the breech. The pistons spring uncoils and propels the piston forward, where its head strikes the base of the gas plug producing the distinctive ringing sound. The entire operation takes less than half a second to complete, and the rifle is ready to fire again.
The sounds of firing SLRs, AKMs and the detonation of grenades took over as the AFVs targets were obscured by their own sides’ infantry. The Guardsmen knew what had happened to their mates, who’d been left behind at the river, and it didn’t matter to them that their enemy then had been Czech, they laid into the Russian paratroopers with a vengeance. There was not a single man involved that was not scared, and that went for both sides. No one would show fear to their mates as they threw grenades and rushed in whilst its shock effect still held good. They were frightened as they parried opponent’s thrusts and followed through with butt strokes or thrusts with the bayonet. They weren’t fighting for Queen and Country, nor even for ‘The Regiment’, they fought for each other.
With the shortage of officers, Sgt Osgood and CSM Probert were now each commanding rifle platoons, which were attacking in a two sections up, one back formation. As a trench was taken, it was occupied by the victors who then put down fire on the next position, covering their mates as they leap-frogged forward from position to position.
Oz was out of breath when the last of his platoons’ objectives had been taken. Muscles were threatening to turn to jelly as reaction set in, but he combated this by organising his sections to take the Russian in-depth positions under fire. The enlarged mortar platoon had kept that enemy occupied and unable to do more than risk the occasional shot in support of their forward positions. The Warriors and Challengers moved up and added their fire to that of the infantry as the two companies of the 82nd Airborne showed the Brits that they were pretty good at this stuff too.
Earlier at the O Groups, there were smiles raised on the Toms faces when call signs had been given. The Americans had given their companies the call signs; Metal Falcon’s One and Two, which the CO thought was a bit too John Wayne-ish, so he had given himself the call sign ‘Rubber Duck’ and called his two Coldstream rifle companies, Plastic Chicken and Paper Parrot. Not since the Korean War had American and British units fought side by side. Both armies thought they were the best but had no real chance to prove it until today, although nobody was actually keeping a tally, holding a stopwatch or awarding marks for artistic merit. As dawn turned to daylight, both units held each other in genuine respect, with the taking of the Autobahn junction.
The Russians fought hard, with skill and not a little courage either, but for once they had been on the receiving end and it was forty minutes after the infantry assault began, before Russian shells began to arrive, and those batteries delivering them received swift response from NATO. As the Russian shelling died out, 2LI passed through the Guards and 82nd Airborne to take on the next Russian positions, at the airport perimeter. To their right, 7th/8th Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders had won their fight too and the US paratroopers and British infantry heard the sound of bagpipes.
“Poor, poor bastards!” said Reed sadly. Major Popham looked at the colonel before peering into the distance, toward the sound.
“Is there a problem?”
“The Jocks are using their porridge guns on the Russians!” replied the colonel, as he listened to the distant strains of The Black Bear.
In Schkeuditz to the south of the junction, Senior Lieutenant of Paratroops Nikoli Bordenko received a quick set of orders from his company commander as their company was to pull out of their own battalions in-depth positions enroute to reinforce the battalion at the airport. Apparently word had only just arrived that the battalion there was about to be overrun and time was of the essence, so he gathered his men and they hurriedly boarded requisitioned civilian trucks.
North Pacific: same time.
The Mao and the Kuznetsov were making twenty six knots on a course of 180’ when Vice Admiral Putchev stepped out of the helicopter that had delivered him, once more to the Chinese flagship… Crouching low to avoid being beheaded, he hurried from the machine as it spooled up and lifted off the flight deck. Captain Hong saluted whilst smiling enthusiastically at the Russian naval officer.
“Welcome back, sir…how was your flight?”
“Interminable, we were an hour out of Vladivostok when I got my orders to come back. We had to continue in to refuel before returning, so I have been in the air for virtually twenty-four hours’ and my ass is numb.”
He paused to observe the welding going on above their heads. “American Harpoon, I have only heard about the battle second hand?” he queried.
Captain Hong led him to his cabin and explained about the submarine attack and the air strikes, which had been two separate battles, and fought on different days, contrary to the propaganda version.
The captain had already requested a more substantial submarine screen than they’d had previously, along with replacements for the frigates and destroyers that had been lost.
&nbs
p; “So tell me Captain,” began the Russian Admiral.
“How long before the Americans use nuclear weapons on us, and where are the Americans other carriers and submarines?”
They had reached the Admirals cabin and a seaman opened the cabin door for them.
Inside they found that the previous occupant’s belongings were still in place, and Hong fired off some harsh words in rapid fire Cantonese at the seaman, demanding to know why the cabin was not ready for Vice Admiral Putchev. The seaman looked stricken when he replied, before dashing away.
“My wife speaks like that to me, usually when I have had too much vodka than is good for me…I couldn’t fathom what she say’s either, it was rather too fast for my European ear?” stated the Russian.
Hong apologised for the condition of the cabin.
“He has been engaged on repair duties and forgot. He asked where he should send the effects, I told him to dump them over the side, after he had removed any items of value for himself and his mess mates.”
“I take it that the late Admiral Li did not improve with age?”
The Chinese officer shook his head.
“You could say that…if you would accompany me to my cabin sir, I can properly brief you on events?”