Before their positions lay some of the most expensive tank traps in the world, towed artillery pieces with their breech blocks removed, were in clusters designed to channel the enemy into killing fields. They had more guns than they had ammunition for, so the rounds were distributed to the self-propelled batteries and the remainder had disabled their guns before joining the ranks of the infantry. Thin ditches had been dug in front of the positions, too shallow to offer real cover to an enemy. Rain had fallen all night, covering their narrow bottoms and drumming off the barrels beside them.
The army’s soft skinned transport was either submerged or poking above the surface of the lakes, just off the banks where they had been pushed to deter or hinder amphibious flanking attacks by APCs and light tanks. Although their fuel tanks had been drained of diesel for the armour, and petrol for field defences, the oil from the waterlogged engine blocks and sumps polluted the surface of the lakes.
To the rear of the foxhole that Johar shared with Sgt Topl was a T-72, dug-in in the hull down position as a static pillbox. It had just enough fuel to provide power for its turret; the rest had been siphoned off for their best tanks, the least badly damaged. Johar’s armoured neighbour was just one of over thirty tanks and APCs that now provided strongpoints in the defence. Eighteen tanks and twelve APCs constituted the mobile reserve, held ready to plug any gaps that may appear in the defensive lines.
Johar was asleep, wrapped in a filthy blanket and groundsheet at the bottom of the foxhole when Sgt Topl shook him awake.
“Standing patrols coming in Major… the Russians have arrived… infantry attack forming up to the front. I think they are going to try a sneak night attack, anytime now. I have informed the command post and the men.”
Johar rolled out of his ‘bed’; his feet squelched in the mud that was the floor of their foxhole’s shelter bay and took a swig of water from his canteen. All the equipment he wore came off dead men, from the helmet on his head to the boots on his feet. Sgt Topl was staring at him; Johar could feel the man’s eyes, so he put away the water and rolled up the blanket, putting it inside the fertiliser bag he had acquired. Sgt Topl’s pet hate was equipment left out when not in immediate use.
Once the blanket was strapped to the top of his pack next to his folding shovel and his groundsheet rolled up and likewise stowed away, they left their foxhole to crawl over the muddy ground, from hole to hole, checking everyone was now alert and their equipment packed away. For the past week, Sergeant Topl had, in private, treated his new officer as he would a recruit but without the cuffing and occasional kick that recently ex-civilians were awarded in the name of military education. Topl treated all recruits like un-house broken puppies, if they were bad they were scolded and had their noses rubbed in it, if they continued to offend his professional sensibilities, then it got painful.
Everyone was tired, everyone was hungry and many were carrying injuries from earlier combat, Johar now knew them all by name, even in the dark after the close contact of the last few days, he knew these men better than he did his own squadron mates. He gave encouragement where needed and left the advice to Sgt Topl, but he did tell them what he thought would be happening.
“It’s unusual for the Russians not to charge in with their tanks and APCs, I think they are going to try and rush us on foot so we probably will not see their artillery first, it would have happened already if they were going to do that.”
“Are they short of ammunition sir, is that why?” one had asked him.
“If the enemy are short on shells for their big guns then it is your birthday and Christmas come all at once, Rudik.”
It took less than ten minutes to do the rounds and then they headed back to the safety of their own hole, as they arrived they heard the creaking sound of the T-72’s turret being hand cranked around, and Johar used a field telephone to speak to the tank commander. They were short on night viewing aids; or rather they had run out of the batteries that ran them.
The T-72 did not have thermal sights, but its commander had Johar's own night scope, run directly off the tanks power supply in the absence of batteries. At the moment the tank’s engine silent, having been shut down just after last light, to save fuel and deny the enemy any thermal clue as to its location. Whenever the engine was shut down, the crew would carry buckets of water from the lake, and dump the contents over the tank, starting with the engine deck, in order to cool down the metal quicker. It was backbreaking work going back and forth, but it improved their chances of survival.
The T-72s Commander informed Johar that he was watching movement in a treeline 1200m away, through the night scope. The crew would lay-on by hand for the first shot, and then start up the engine, so as to remain hidden for as long as possible.
After a minute or so the tank reported infantry deploying out of the woods and heading towards them slowly. At night, slow equals quiet.
Once this had been reported, men were sent forward to un-stopper the barrels and remove them once empty. The stink of petrochemicals hung in the damp air as the men returned to their lines.
By the time the approaching Russian infantry were 800m out, the last of their number had just cleared the treeline. Three infantry battalions in total, three thousand men, were heading for the ground between the lakes held by two Belorussian Regiments that together numbered only nine hundred and eighty-two.
Johar handed the field telephone over to Sgt Topl, who already had the radio’s telephone handset to one ear.
The Belorussians in the tiny army quietly waited for the Russians to arrive, listening hard for any noise emitting from the darkness. Johar gripped his AK-74 and felt the fear in his gut. He had been in several fire fights over the past week but only used his weapon during the first, though he seriously doubted he had hit anything. It came as something of a relief when Sgt Topl had taken him to task over it.
“You are supposed to be the leader sir; while you are blasting away you are not watching what’s going on and not controlling the fight.”
Johar had watched Topl after that; he’d shout fire control orders to the men, not letting them all fire at the same target, thereby wasting ammunition. The sergeant did use ammunition though; he would fish out his own fresh magazines from ammunition pouches, tossing them over to anyone who was running short, before giving covering fire whilst they reloaded.
Before was different though, before they had had some place to withdraw to. When they received word that the Polish hierarchy had been annihilated it had been too late to disperse and fight on as guerrillas, Poles under new management and the Ukrainians were closing in. They were already dead men, they all knew it and all chose to go down fighting rather than go quietly into the night, with a bullet in the back of the neck.
They had expected the enemy to beat on them from the air, but the enemy had been oddly absent up there which was just as well, because three ZSU-23-4s constituted their entire dedicated air defence.
After what seemed like an age, the dug-in tanks fired almost in unison, white phosphorus rounds ignited the fuel with a roar. Only a few of the Russian infantry came to any direct harm from the flames, but it silhouetted several hundred against the fire. Para-illum was distinctly short on the inventory but for a relatively short time at least the Belorussians had achieved surprise, shock and a target rich environment. The Russian infantry were not green troops, the ‘rabbit-caught-in-the — headlights’ effect lasted only moments before the targets went to ground, even if they were still in view, they made themselves smaller targets whilst they crawled and rolled to better cover. Several dozen however, were caught by the Belorussians small arms fire before they could react or get down. The hull-down tanks and APCs started up their engines to provide power for the turrets and automatic loaders whilst the infantry did their best to kill as many of the Russians on this side of the flames as they could. They ganged up on the figures of those not yet in cover as they hugged the muddy earth; bullets kicked up the ground around them as they crawled desperately, until the rounds struck home. The figures jerked as they were hit, and then the defenders moved on to another, until that too was hit.