by Andy Farman
On a more positive note, his Blowpipe crews had re-equipped with Stinger RMP, re-programmable microprocessor, Block 1 missiles, courtesy of Major Popham and the United States Army. All his replacements for the Guards battalion had arrived but equipped with SLRs as the SA-80 stock had run out. The weapons had seen prior service but had been re-parkerised and refurbished before going into storage. The younger guardsmen rushed through training had little experience with the weapon but the called up reservists and the volunteering reservists with a few years behind them certainly had.
The quartermasters would grumble about keeping to different calibres of ‘ball’ ammunition but the SA-80 ammunition stocks they held were depleting so it would not be a problem for long.
His battalion had proved itself in the offence, but now the more trying role of defence was about to be visited upon it once more. He believed the earlier criticisms following its trial by fire on the river Wesernitz were unwarranted, and unjust, but now the battalion would now have to excel itself holding this line on the river Elbe.
WO2 Probert was still an acting platoon commander but Oz had been replaced by a young 2nd Lieutenant who had passed out early from Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy, and without much in the way of ceremony. Sgt Osgood had a brew on after Colin had led the last rifle section across the bridge to their new trenches. It was pitch dark, as most nights had been since the soviet submarine wolf packs had been dealt with. Despite a moon, the overcast eliminated all light from that direction and it took some time for him to make his way to the platoon HQ trench, squelching through the mud. Not a day had gone past without rain, and Colin couldn’t remember the last time he had seen the sun and blue skies. Lowering himself down into the firing bay he ducked under the soggy old green duvet cover that hung over the entrance to the shelter bay, and then under an old grey army blanket into the dim light within, preserving the all-important blackout. The hiss of a petrol stove greeted him; the fumes from the issue hexamine blocks, known as ‘Hexi’, were too dangerous to be used in poorly ventilated areas.
“Hello dear I’m home, what’s for dinner?”
Oz poured some water into a mug, and the aroma of coffee laced with scotch filled the cramped space. He handed the steel mug over and held up a tin.
“We’ve got compo chicken curry, mate…with tinned fruit cake and bacon grill mixed in.” The bulky Composite Rations had been replaced by boil-in-the-bag fare for the armed forces years ago, however a stockpile for times such as these had been retained.
“Compo rations…I thought they had been given away to drought stricken countries to feed their big shots' families, and for the big shots to get richer selling what’s left to the starving masses?”
“Well apparently there’s still a shit-load left…and this chicken probably died before your granny was born.” Oz screwed up his nose, as he tasted some on the racing spoon he was stirring it with, and reaching into his Bergen he withdrew an old camm stick tube and shook some curry powder in.
“Any idea when the war here starts again Col?”
“We had one dead and three wounded today, I don’t think it’s stopped!”
“Apart from the odd shell and sniper, I mean.”
“According to the CO most of the Red air went north…big ruck up that way, but it’s over now so it is about to get serious down here again.”
A JCB had been used to prepare most of the new fighting positions, and as this one was meant to accommodate four, they had more room for the little perks that soldiers of experience acquire…given half a chance and an inattentive storeman. As it was, two stretchers were unfolded at the far end of the shelter bay to provide a comfy bed each, and clearance from the damp earth. Colin removed his fighting order and hung it by the yoke on a modified tripflare picket driven diagonally into the wall of the trench, next to Oz’s where it could dry out, not take up space, and be easily accessible when required. A certain Scandinavian furniture and interiors chain could learn a lot from a soldiers space saving/time saving inventiveness.
There was a click from one of the field telephones and Oz picked up the receiver.
“Cringeworthy & Snodgrass, purveyors of fine wines and ugly but grateful women.” There were three field phones in the shelter bay, and Oz was not worried about using incorrect VP on this particular one. He listened for a moment before replacing the receiver. “Arnie’s on his way over.”
Colin shook his head.
“One day you’ll forget which phones which and piss off someone who takes this army stuff seriously.”
“I already did, the new adjutant called, and then he demanded to know who I was.”
“And…”
“So I said ‘Don’t you know?’ and when he said he didn’t, I replied ‘Well thank God for that, then!’, and hung up on him.”
Colin wasn’t impressed.
“Sarn’t Osgood…that story was old back when Monck was a corporal!” referring to the general who had founded their R regiment in 1650.
They heard movement outside and continued talking, but removed Russian Yarygin 9mm pistols from concealment about their persons, and levelling them at the entrance, just in case.
Someone rapped on the log over the entrance of the shelter bay.
“Entrée!” said Colin.
Arne Moore pushed his way through the blackout, and gawped at the two handguns pointing at his head. He was unfazed by the menacing muzzles; in fact his eyes showed envy rather than alarm.
“Hey, where’d you guys get those things, they is like gold dust?”
Oz smiled brightly.
“Sir, we are highly skilled professionals and elite infantry of Her Majesty’s very own Division…we have training and resources beyond the means and understanding of you mere colonials.”
“You mean you looted them off dead Reds.”
“Absolutely…anyway, pull up a pew and excuse the mess, it’s the butlers day off.” Colin handed over the communal mug and Arne sniffed the contents appreciatively before taking a mouthful.
“Argh…great!” From inside his smock he withdrew a tin of something or other and tossed it to the sergeant. Oz shrugged on reading the label and fished out a large mess tin, transferring in the contents of the mug and adding the tins once he’d got the lid off.
“It’s only going to taste of curry anyway.”
Fifteen minutes later and they huddled together, wolfing the food down from the single mess tin. Arne regarded the piece of sliced peach sat in curry sauce on his spoon for a second, he had intended the tin of fruit cocktail to be dessert, something to wash away the ever present curry flavour the Toms always seemed to add. He decided to go along with the British squaddies philosophy that it all goes down the same hole anyway, so why increase the chores by doubling the washing up, and he so he shrugged and carried on eating.
Bill and Big Stef had recce’d and prepared five firing points, all muddily accessible by crawling along ditches and dead ground. There were three pairs of snipers covering the river, two gun groups and two Milan crews in addition to a handful of radio operators occupying the ground the battalion once held. Working a stag roster of three on, three off, they kept an eye on the opposite bank but rarely fired. The marksmen of both sides had developed, or rather they had re-learnt, the counter sniping skills of earlier conflicts. Enticingly obvious dummies offering targets of opportunity to the other sides’ snipers had given way to more realistic and ingenious lures. If one reacted to the lures there were at least three equally skilled marksmen across the water watching intently for a flicker of muzzle flash, or a puff of smoke. Even if the man survived the counter fire, the position he had used was compromised for all time and could only be used again as a last resort.
An ingenious sniper in the 82nd had put together a sort of exoskeleton affair that he wore on his back, he would crawl along suitable stretches of dead ground with the dummy sat a foot above his back, mimicking his every movement, and just visible to the enemy. It drew sniper fire on three occasions and
the NATO snipers got to either shoot one of their opposite numbers, or scare the crap out of them, they never knew which. On the fourth occasion it was used the enemy open up with a mortar instead of a sniper rifle. All in all the young inventor had a lucky escape, he was back on the line but he couldn’t yet sit down on butt cheeks that had been peppered with half a dozen shards of red hot shrapnel.
While the battalion had occupied the ground, a story had circulated amongst the riflemen of a beautiful blonde soviet sniper, whom it was alleged could sometimes be seen walking naked through the pre-dawn mist on the opposite bank. A popular explanation for this went along the lines of her returning to her own position after a night of passion in the soviet generals bunker, despite its fanciful nature it fired the imagination of many a young guardsman and paratrooper. The older and more cynical troops scoffed at the notion. “Poor girl will catch her death of cold, it must be forty miles from the bunker to the river…if their generals are anything like ours!” was Bill’s opinion of the story.
Bill was peering through his night scope at one a.m., it was raining hard outside their position and it was their ‘semi-downtime’ so he did not intend shooting at anything from here. He was on watch and it was another pair’s job to be in a firing position, he and Big Stef were in O.P mode.
Stef was curled up fast asleep in his maggot and Bill would not wake him for another ninety minutes, all he needed to do was stay alert and stay awake. Of all the different times zones (with seasonal daylight saving variants) in the world, BST, GMT, EST to name but a few, SST, Squaddie Sangar Time was a phenomena in that you could check your watch, resume observing for another half hour before checking it again, and find that only five minutes has actually elapsed. Bill was gazing out at the wet depressing vista and consciously avoiding checking his watch when the barely audible clicking of the field telephone caused him to block the aperture he had been looking through, in case the call should involve him looking at the map, which required light. He lifted the phone, gave their call sign and listened for a few moments. Big Stef grumbled as he came to wakefulness. “Ok, ok…stop squeezing my sodding earlobe; I’m in the land of the living!”
“It’s a general stand-to…something soviet this way comes, mate.”
Stef climbed from his sleeping bag and started to cram it into its compression bag, shivering with the transition from warm and snug to cold and damp, muttering to himself as he did so.
“Ugly and grumpy…” Bill said with satisfaction. “…my work here is done!”
“Shut yer hole…bleedin’ Monkey.”
Everything not in immediate use was already packed away of course, so it took less than five minutes before they were leaving on their bellies, crawling forward to one of the firing points.
Colin put down the receiver from the company CP and reached for the communications cords connecting them to the section commanders trenches, and began tugging away on them. When he received answering tugs he knew the two lance sergeants and one lance corporal commanding each section was alerted.
CSM Probert had packed all their kit away and folded the stretchers in readiness for normal use, before swapping the filter on his respirator for a new one.
“Do you know something I don’t Col?”
“No Oz, it’s just a feeling. The Reds are running out of time and I think they’ll be tempted to use that shit on us again, if they have any left.”
“Cheerful sod, ain’t yer!” Oz replied, but swapped his over too.
Although chemical weapons hadn’t been used again since the first major clash of the land armies, they still wore their NBC clothing as a matter of course, despite the discomfort.
Major Venables, the Hussar squadrons’ new commander keyed the alert into his Ptarmigan system and flashed the stand-to to all his vehicles, including the troop of Chieftains that had arrived with the system hurriedly installed. His own command tank had a direct patch to the MSTARS feed, the mobile battlefield radar which had sounded the alarm when it detected armour approaching from twenty miles distant.
The airborne JSTARS platform had watched them come on, of course, but they were busy up there. In the last twenty-four hours the soviets had created dozens of dummy radar and thermal targets, whilst moving their real units around.
It was the shell game but on a grand scale.
The army of the West had enjoyed a couple of days respite to resupply and improve their positions, but the same was true for the other guy too.
The green display from the MSTARS feed changed colour, flashing red twice, a visual alarm indicating shells were in the air and coming their way. The rest they had enjoyed was over; someone had just rung the bell for the next round.
North Cape: Same time.
“Sandman this is Pointer!”
The TAO aboard the Charles de Gaulle depressed his send button to reply to the American operator in the E-3 Sentry aircraft.
“Sandman…go ahead Pointer.”
“Tripwire reports multiple submerged traffic inbound your posit…you may want to think about doubling up your helo’s.”
“Thank you Pointer…Sandman out.” He gestured to a junior officer and handed him a message form.
“Wake the Admiral and ASWO.” he ordered “HMS Temeraire has signalled the AWACs that the submarines are coming, and I am scrambling more choppers as well as having the P3s and Nimrods double up on-station. I am also asking Norway to do the same with its shore based helicopters, but they are probably already doing so.” The young officer nodded and hurried from the CIC.
Fifteen minutes later, Bernard was in CIC and taking a seat next to the Tactical Action officer, he beat the Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer by seconds.
“What’s happening…anything more?” asked the breathless ASWO.
“Not so far.”
The big screen showed the current P3 Orion begin a run that would lay a line of sonar buoys across the expected path of the submarine flotillas, and six helicopters head east of that line and slow to a halt to begin dipping their sonars.
“I want a CAP for those helicopters.” Bernard announced, pointing at the exposed ASW, NH-90 NFH and Sea Kings.
“Sir, the only aircraft left on the Pechenga airfields are not airworthy, the rest went back to Germany,” the TAO said.
“Have you been there and examined them yourself Henri?”
The TAO was silent for a second as he considered his superior’s words.
“Sorry sir, I will get one up,” and picked up a telephone.
Five minutes later though, the AWAC raised the alarm.
“Sandman! Sandman! This is Pointer…Air raid warning! air raid warning! we show multiple contacts lifting off in the Pechenga region…classify as Mike India Golf, Three One’s…copy my last Sandman?”
“Send our own CAP to intercept, Henri!”
“Sandman this is Pointer...do you copy?”
“Answer him someone…get the alert five up as replacement for our CAP, and for God’s sake warn the choppers!”
From their orbit southeast of the ships the two pairs of delta wing Rafale Ms on top CAP went to burner and a tanker was ordered aloft as they would need it to get home again afterwards.
The screen was relaying to CIC aboard the carrier what the AWAC was seeing. A dozen enemy aircraft, streaking northwest towards the half dozen helicopters that had received the warning from the AWAC and were running for home. Two of the enemy tracks split away from the rest and while one made a beeline for the maritime patrol Orion, the second headed for the two RAF Nimrods that had launched in answer to the carriers earlier request, but were now heading back to Norway as fast as they could. It was no contest really, the Rafales had too much ground to cover in order to get into missile range of the attackers. One by one the helicopters disappeared from the screen, swiftly followed by the P-3 Orion and a Nimrod. The French admirals fingers were digging into the armrests of his swivel chair as he willed the last RAF Nimrod on. It was almost kissing the wave tops in its efforts to evade the figh
ter. The pilot of the Mig-31 Foxhound had passed up countless possible missile shots and appeared to be playing with his unarmed prey, leaving an opening for the Nimrod to turn toward the shoreline and its associated radar clutter, before heading it off with cannon fire that flew across the British Nimrods nose. Eventually the approaching Rafales were too close for comfort, and the Mig raked the patrol aircrafts cabin, killing its mainly female operators, before putting a burst into the cockpit on its next pass. With a dead hand on the controls, the Nimrods left wing dropped, it hit the water and the aircraft cartwheeled over the surface, its tail and wings snapping off, before it disappeared below the waves.
“Salaud!” roared Admiral Bernard as he leapt out his chair, the veins in his neck and forehead bulging. He stabbed a finger at the Foxhounds icon on the screen, now running toward safety.
“Somebody kill that son of a bitch!” But the soviet aircraft made it back to land and the Rafales had to break off as shore based SAM sites locked them up.
Bernard was incensed; he strode away from the screen. They had lost helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft and the crews, that was what war was about, but he didn’t have to like watching it happen.
“Do we have contact with the English submarine?”
“Perhaps…maybe the AWAC or JSTARS does, sir.”
“It has land attack missiles, yes?”
“Tomahawk TLAMs…yes sir.” answered the TAO.
“Call them up, call the Anglo’s and tell them to blast those airfields…” he stalked back to the big screen, and once again stabbed his finger at the Mig-31. “…starting with the one this, Enfoiré…lands at!”
The TAO looked apologetic.
