' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (12 page)

The ‘Uhry Hill Fort Preservation Protest Group’ camp had been abandoned before C/2/198 had arrived, however they had sent messages of good luck to the British tankers before joining the refugees fleeing west.

The junction itself was half a klick to the northwest where a section each of German Pioniertruppe, combat engineers, and Feldjäger military police were posted. There was not much interaction between the Americans and the Germans.
 

There was the usual shouting as camouflage nets snagged a vehicle and had to be unsnarled or the hard work of building those enclosures would be undone. That was the trouble with camouflage nets; they were nets, invented to catch stuff a very long, long, time before their adoption as tools of concealment.

The M125s merely started up, opened up the split hatch in the roof and cleared away the netting. The 81mm mortars were ready to put rounds down at any time.

Franklin tossed the CEOI to the tracks driver.

“Start trying a few channels, they can’t all be unworkable. When you get someone tell them you’ll be listening on their channel for them to pass the word to our battalion CP for an alternate frequency, and that we are stood-to as a precaution.”

He left him to it, pulled on his helmet and load bearing equipment before grabbing his weapon.

Stepping out into the rain he could see the 11 and 13 tanks were covering the west and south but the 12 tank was stopped out in the open, its driver trying to find a gear. That damn machine had been trouble since they’d drawn it from the POMCUS at Husterhoeh. The first sergeant was on the hull of the tank, kneeling beside the driver’s head, holding onto the main gun for support as he shouted advice.

The second platoon and third platoons had no serviceable tanks, and second platoon had absorbed the survivors of third platoon in the post-Elbe reorganization. Two thirds the strength of an infantry platoon and yet they were filling that role anyway, trudging wearily towards their own fighting positions, one on each side of the triangle. They were split into three squads of six men in two fire teams. Each team had their
M-16s plus an M240 machine gun and a trio of FGM-148 Javelin missiles. Franklin had used the Javelin in Iraq and he hadn’t been a fan of it despite its advantages over previous weapons. An ATGW’s soft under-belly had always been its operators having to stay put while the weapons were in flight. The missiles had an obvious launch signature that identified its firing position, and of course where the guys who had launched it could be found and killed. Javelin was a fire-and-forget missile, the operator placed the reticule upon the target in the same way you would focus a modern digital camera, and the tracker acknowledged target recognition by forming a box about the targets image, again in a similar way to a camera. Once fired the missile then ‘soft launched’, thereby being some several feet from the soldier who had loosed it off before the rocket motor fired. The firer could scoot into cover immediately, which improved his chances of survival. The downside was that you couldn’t just see a target and simply engage it, because the cooling unit took a minimum of thirty seconds to do its thing before the seeker unit would work. It tracked a target thermally so on a hot day it could have trouble locating the actual target you wanted to hit. Not exactly anybody’s weapon of choice in a slug-fest but these weaknesses had been identified, and future upgrades would improve its engagement time. Teething troubles were ever the problem with weapons, and probably the only one to ever work as advertised from the moment it came out of its box was the flint knife, and that knife didn’t cost the same price as a Mercedes Benz convertible each time you used it.

He raised his face to the heavens, letting the rain wash away some of the tiredness and he was enjoying the sensation of raindrops on his face until the moment was ruined by an explosion.   

Franklin crouched down instinctively, feeling the sudden wave of heat and a buffet from the blast. The first sergeant hit the wet earth in front of him, or at least part of him did. All four limbs and the head were missing.

There was a smell of high explosive caused by the detonation of a Sagger anti-tank missile. A pall of smoke hung around the 12 tank but it had not penetrated the armour. The driver was now frantically attempting to find a gear, any damn gear.

Realising that he was gormlessly staring from the limbless body in the mud, to the tank, and back again, Franklin dropped to the ground and began to crawl to the nearest cover.

Finally getting the transmission to engage the M1 jerked backwards into reverse, and travelled six feet before it was struck again. It shuddered to a stalling halt where it was hit a third and final time.   Super-heated gasses jetted out of the turrets open hatches and its commander rolled screaming down the side of the turret, his overalls smoking but there was no explosion, the storage bin doors had been closed when the tank was struck. However, thick black smoke poured out, followed by a lick of flame before the Halon fire extinguishers activated.

Franklin saw the driver crawl free and climb on top of the turret, assisting the injured loader and gunner, both of whom were suffering from burns. His instinct was to run over and help but Franklin had a company to run, and the crew would have to make-do by themselves for now.

A Sagger missile streaked overhead, a clear miss, and a second struck the packed earth before the 11 tank, exploding harmlessly and flinging great clods of earth in all directions.

The ITV’s commander opened fire with a turret mounted M240, the red tracer identifying one of the dismounted Romanian anti-tank team’s positions for the remainder to engage but he stopped firing abruptly, hurriedly dropping from sight as Romanian infantry in turn zeroed green tracer onto him.

With a splash of muddy water Franklin arrived in a second platoon hole, they were engaging the enemy with their M16s and M240.

The company did not have a FIST and in the absence of a fire control order the mortars were silent. Franklin Stiles looked for the squad leader and saw him actively engaged in the fire
fight. The young man was a supermarket trainee manager and loader in the armoured branch by way of a military trade, not an infantry leader, so despite his new title he had not yet acquired the skills to go with it.

Lt Stiles peered quickly over the lip of the position, needing only a moment to locate the enemy by the muzzle flashes. The Sagger team had not fired again and had either been killed, had their heads down or they were relocating. The infantry were not sitting handily upon any of the TRPs, the target reference points on the company’s defensive fire plan, and so an adjust-fire was required.

The company’s infantry positions all had field telephones with landlines laid to the CP and to the mortar carriers. The mortar tubes had already pivoted on their turntables to point towards the action, the crews impatiently awaited someone to tell them where to shoot.

"Mike Three One this is India Two Alpha, adjust fire, shift Delta Foxtrot one-zero-two-zero over"

 A tinny voice greeted him without ceremony, reading back his information.

"This is Mike Three One, adjust fire,
 shift Delta Foxtrot one-zero-two-zero out"  

"Adjust from Delta Foxtrot one-zero-two-zero…Left five-zero, Up one-zero-zero. Infantry in the tree line, over"  

"Adjust from
 Delta Foxtrot one-zero-two-zero Left five-zero Up one-zero-zero. Infantry in the tree line, out"
 

Behind him the range, bearing and elevation settings for DF 1020 were identified on the fire plan, and then the adjustments applied before the number 1s of each crew received the required information.

Franklin could clearly hear the shouted orders from the rear.

“Charge two, elevation eleven zero zero, bearing forty two thirty, one round HE!”

Back home in the USA the Mississippi National Guard’s mortars ability had been regarded as adequate for their role. They were part-timers after all. Here in the middle of a war in Europe they had had plenty of practice in recent weeks. They weren’t fair-to-middling mortarmen any longer; they were veterans and expert at their trade.

The distinctive sound of both mortars was followed immediately by the fire direction centre’s verbal confirmation that rounds were in the air.

“Shot over.”

“Shot out.” Franklin acknowledged and stared at the treeline cautiously, the firefight had no victors yet and the red and green tracer flew back and forth.

The telephone handset clicked.

“Splash over”
the FDC stated. He knew the time of flight and on a battle field with shells falling from more than one source it was important to know which explosion was your explosion.

Two bright flashes of light eclipsed the small arms fire of the Soviet troops.

“On target, fire for effect, over.”

“On target, fire for effect, out.”

The mortarmen responded accordingly, the number 2s putting four mortar bombs in the air per tube before the first one landed. Each mortar round was fused ‘super-quick’ as the targets were not dug-in for defence. The detonating round would not provide a deep crater for cover and if it struck a tree the effects against infantry were pretty vicious.

A flash of light accompanied each explosion but it took several seconds for the crump of the detonations to reach him.

Dead or just suppressed, the Soviet infantry in the wood line were no longer firing on them, but in two other places out on the night-time landscape machine guns opened fire, green tracer falling on the right flank of the American position.

The Javelins here had no worthwhile targets yet, they weren’t exactly flush with the weapons anyway, but a soldier had a Javelin’s CLU operating, using the thermal sight to identify targets. Franklin nudged him aside and looked for himself. The wood line where he had called in the fire mission was to the right of a fire break. It stretched away like a Roman road before him, and there, in the distance he caught the green glow of a vehicle passing briefly into view, and then a second heat source, also travelling right to left. He kept the CLU aimed
at that point for a half minute longer but the movement of those two vehicles was not repeated. Was it just two, or had he merely caught the tail-end-Charlie’s of a tank brigade? That would certainly ruin his next Christmas and birthday, both. 

Whatever it was, it was heading west along the forest firebreaks in the same direction as Autobahn 2.

Franklin returned the CLU and handed the telephone handset to the squad leader, reminding him that his primary job was to control the fight, not to join in. He then bent double as he ran back past the APC he had left, heading for the south side positions. He was the company commander, not a rifleman, but without working radios he had to get a handle on what they were up against by seeing for himself. He was almost there when somewhere a giant took a massive swing at an anvil and he flung himself down, gasping in pain with the effect it had on his ears. An afterimage floated before his eyes and he blinked furiously to clear it. The sound had been accompanied by a flash of intense light from the 13 tanks position.

A strange halo sat above the M1 and the stink of ozone filled Lt Stile’s nostrils. It was caused by a 125mm tungsten carbide sabot striking the M1 turret’s sloping glacis a glancing blow.

The enemy clearly had the 13 tank’s range with the very first shot, and whether or not it was beginner’s luck or the skill of much practice, the decision to stay or go was a no-brainer for the Abrams commander. 13 reversed backwards rapidly, pulling back out of its attacker’s view where it pivoted on its tracks, heading for a new position with a foot long scar glowing bright red on its turrets leading edge.

A Javelin missile was ejected from its launch tube, flying a short distance before the rocket motor cut in and it accelerated rapidly away. As Franklin regained his feet there was a distant flash of light as the missile killed the 13 tank’s attacker.

This was a well-planned attack, allowing the infantry to dismount and attempt to take out his tanks by surprise from relatively close in before committing their own armour. Only now could he hear the sound of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles closing on his small group of defenders.

The rain wasn’t helping his Mk-1 eyeballs as he squinted through his binoculars but he was pretty sure there were vehicles moving parallel to the autobahn here too, also heading west.

The western side was currently clear of enemy but that could quickly change.

A vicious firefight was taking place down at the junction. He tried to recall how many the Feldjäger and engineers numbered. Was it twenty or so?

The combat engineer’s Marder was engaging targets Franklin was unable to see unaided but which included a Sagger team. He heard a missile launch and immediately the Marder’s 20mm cannon opened up, with the result that the missile went ballistic. He could only hope that the cause of that had been a dead Sagger crew as the firing on both sides petered out.

The rattle of tracks and drive sprockets grew louder from the northwest and again the Marder’s cannon opened fire, only to be cut short by a T-90’s main gun.

The Soviet tank troop advanced now with their main guns silent but the machine guns active, hunting down the field police and combat engineers at the junction before at last appearing from beneath autobahn 39 where it straddled autobahn 2.