Confronted with an almost solid wall of armour emerging into view, Lt Col Reed ordered his anti-tank platoon to engage along with the Hussars MBTs, and Milan wire guided missiles sped towards the attackers along with tank rounds.
Colonel Lužar’s PT-76 was one of the last to leave the waters of the Elbe, climbing the bank to the left, and slightly behind a BTR-80. As the neighbouring APC reached the apex of the bank, gravity took over and the front end of the vehicle dropped level, it started to move forward and then stopped dead, as if it had run into a brick wall. The rear doors to the troop compartment flew opened and men tumbled out, one man’s protective outer clothing was burning and he threw himself down into the snow, rolling frantically to put out the flames, unseating his respirator as he did so. His desperate efforts to put out the flames ceased and the soldiers body began to jerk and spasm like an epileptic in the throes of a fit before becoming very still.
Lužar’s own tank completed the risky manoeuvre, and the Colonel braced himself as the amphibious tank came down with a thump onto its forward drive sprockets. A Chieftains gunner had fired a moment too late, and the round that was meant for the command tanks soft underbelly met the angled armour of the forward glacis plate instead. Lužar thought a giant had struck the tank with a sledgehammer, he ducked instinctively and his driver yelled out in fright.
“Shut up!” he shouted at the man. “Get us forward man… drive, drive!”
With a jerk the tank started forward, weaving around to the left to avoid the APC and its ready racks of cannon ammunition, which was now beginning to burn.
To the east of the Elbe, the Hungarian combat engineers and bridging units allowed their ZSU-23-4 air defence vehicles and a company of APCs to begin the advance to the river, and then moved off themselves. Although the sounds of battle could not yet reach them, the rising columns of smoke and the bright flashes of NATO tank cannon’s more than indicated to them that the fight for the western bank was far from won yet.
In the armoured cabs of two vehicles in the rear areas of NATOs lines, Royal Artillery gunners fed in information onto the consoles before them and the launchers rose to the specified elevations, turning as they did so to the required bearings. Smoke from the rocket exhausts filled the small woods the vehicles sat in like a thick fog, rolling out beyond the extremities and settling like a blanket in the cold air. The rockets reached their apogee and descended above the countryside to the east of the river Elbe, discharging the submunitions they carried as they went.
Over the wood the MLRS rockets submunitions were small bomblets, but the rockets targeted on an area closer to the river, released submunitions known as Skeet, small discs that spun about like Frisbees as they flew diagonally across the targeted area, slowly losing height. Whenever a Skeet over-flew a vehicle, small sensors detected the metal surface and the submunition exploded, sending a plug of white hot copper, created by the explosion, downwards into the object.
As with most ideas that look good on paper the Skeets had there drawbacks, some vehicles were missed completely, whereas others were targeted by several Skeet even after the vehicle had been destroyed, wasting their effort because they could not distinguish between the living and the dead. The plugs of molten metal entered armour, and blisters formed the other side, bursting into the interior. Where they met un-armoured metal they burnt through several layers, or in the case of the cab roofs of tractor units, they burnt through the occupants as well. Vehicles carrying 25m sections of prefabricated bridge, enough for three entire ribbon bridges were left burning on the autobahn hard shoulder, whilst in the fields either side, the engineers and infantry BTR-80s and ZSU-23-4s streamed smoke and flame whilst blowing themselves apart as on-board ammunition cooked off.
The loss of highly skilled personnel was almost as serious as the loss of the transport and equipment, but the commander of the engineer company did not give up, he still had some bridging sections and enough engineers left to supervise their assembly into one operational bridge.
75 % of the infantrymen escorting them had died in their vehicles when the Skeet had struck, so he could not call on them for muscle. He called up his own commander at Division, but they were inexplicably off the air, so he tried the nearest infantry unit and they sent over fifty men to act as unskilled labour.
Back on the island, Lužar’s promised artillery support had failed to materialise and his calls to divisional headquarters were met with hash, the sound of white noise. His tanks and APCs were being whittled down by the tanks and anti-tank missiles, this created more cover for the remainder as they took up positions in the lee of burning wrecks. Infantry anti-tank teams dismounted from their vehicles and began engaging the NATO armour with Sagger wire guided missiles, but this only gave the American paratroops and Coldstream Guardsmen something worthwhile to shoot at. The combined small arms and 81mm mortars annihilated the Sagger crews or drove them to find cover in which they sensibly stayed. The TP-76 tanks did not have self-stabilising guns, they had to stop in order to fire accurately and suitable cover for them to do this from behind was in short supply. The Milan crews had merely to leave their trenches and change position in order to engage those Hungarian tanks that were in those rare spots.
With his battalions slowly being killed and being unable to hit back effectively, all Lužar could was to skin his knuckles as he punched the side of the turret in frustration.
The engineers were again on the move, braving the artillery fire but the lead vehicles reached the riverbank without further loss. The commander jumped from his BTR shouting and cajoling his remaining engineers and organising the pressed infantrymen into working parties. A pair of his specialised BTRs reached the ‘island’, unreeling heavy cable as they went, and explosive driven piles were fired into the earth of the sloping banks on both sides, as anchors for the cables that they managed to secure to them before both vehicles were knocked out. The next stage was to get the first boat-like floating pontoons into the river and attached between the cables, once that was achieved then the first section of bridge could be laid between pontoons. Further sections would be attached behind it, and gradually the first section would be fed across the river, 25 metres at a time until it reached the far bank. The engineer was running from group to group, ensuring all was well when the first pontoon was being wrestled into place. Men were straining against ropes as they fought to keep the pontoon from being swept away by the current, until the cables could be slipped into runners on either end of the pontoon. His equipment had been designed and built in the 1940’s, and under the many layers of paint it bore the markings of the US Army Corps of Engineers, its original owners before being sold off as war surplus. Later versions had powered pontoons that not only motored the pontoon into position, but the propellers were directional so as to assist with the creeping progress of the bridge, as it slowly spanned the designated waterway. This bridging unit had none of the modern niceties, and as he was shouting orders to one of the groups he saw the anchor-man of one of his pontoon party’s slip on the snow covered ground and let go of the end of the rope. With one of their number absent, the rest of the men on the rope began to lose the battle against the current and the pontoon left its stationary position and began pulling the men towards the river’s edge. The engineer knew that once the leading man reached the edge he would let go of the rope and a chain reaction would occur, leading to the inevitable loss of the precious pontoon.