The remains of his armored vehicles surged forward into the snow-covered village, racing toward the remnants of the smoke contrails from the rocket artillery that been fired just prior to the shooting match they now found themselves in. Bullets were pinging off their armored skin as the vehicle commander swiveled his crew-served weapon, letting loose several bursts from the machine gun at the attackers.
“Sir, you should duck back down and let us return fire at the enemy!” shouted Sergeant Jones from the troop hatch next to the colonel.
Watkins nodded, knowing the sergeant was right. The last thing they needed to have happen was for him as the battalion commander to be shot. He ducked back into the vehicle, allowing one of the young Marines to take his place and fire back at the enemy. Their vehicle continued to race through the village, and the volume of enemy fire dissipated to the point that their vehicle was no longer being shot at. Minutes later, they rounded a corner and found themselves facing a BMP-3 that was in the process of setting up a roadblock on the highway.
The vehicle gunner immediately let loose several bursts from their 30mm cannon as the driver veered hard to the right, barely missing a string of cannon rounds that was fired at them by the BMP. The Warrior’s 30mm rounds tore into the BMP, causing a small explosion when one of the rounds hit the fuel tank. Seconds later, the vehicle blew up, engulfing it and anyone inside it in flames. With the immediate threat neutralized, the driver gunned it as they zoomed past the burning wreck in hot pursuit of the enemy rocket trucks.
Once they rounded a slight bend in the road, the gunner shouted, “I found the first BM-27 rocket launcher!” He depressed the fire button, sending a three-second burst of cannon fire into the rear of the vehicle. The rocket artillery truck blew up and the flaming vehicle careened off the road into a tree. With the first vehicle destroyed, the gunner had an excellent view at the subsequent vehicle and let loose another short burst of 30mm cannon fire. That vehicle also burst into flames as it came to a halt in the center of the road, obscuring their view of the rest of the vehicles.
The Marine continued to gun the engine of their vehicle as he swerved around the burning wreck, revving the engine as they tried to chase down the remaining rocket trucks. The BM-27s were particularly nasty rocket artillery trucks; the 8x8 wheeled vehicles carried a rotating rack of sixteen rocket tubes that fired the 220mm rockets. The rockets could fire either high-explosive rounds or disperse antitank or antipersonnel mines up to thirty-five kilometers away.
“We have to catch those BM-27s!” shouted Lieutenant Colonel Watkins.
As the driver continued to gun the engine, the vehicle slid a bit as the tracks fought to grab traction on the snow-packed road. When the Warrior passed the second burning wreck, they caught sight of the third vehicle, roughly a kilometer in front of them. The gunner fired off another burst from their main gun, sending another barrage of cannon fire slamming into the rear of the vehicle. It, too, burst into flames.
“Keep going! We need to chase down that last vehicle!” yelled the vehicle commander to the driver.
While they continued their hot pursuit, Watkins received a radio update from the other members of their convoy. Behind them, the remaining Ajax scout vehicle, the lone Viking troop carrier and the Challenger tank were still engaging the remnants of the Russian soldiers left in the village. The Marines had disembarked from their armored chariots and were fighting in the streets. Bullets flew back and forth between the two factions of soldiers, riddling many of the houses with ammunition.
Moments later, as the Warrior zoomed past the third burning wreck, giving them a clear shot at the remaining BM-27, they hit a patch of black ice on the road that caused their vehicle to spin out of control and slam into a snowbank. It took a moment for the driver and the vehicle’s occupants to collect themselves and recover from the near-death experience. In the meantime, the final vehicle they’d been chasing had gotten away. With no chance of catching up to it at this point, Lieutenant Colonel Watkins announced, “Good shooting, lads. Now let’s head back to the village and support the rest of our mates in finishing these guys off.”
Shortly after they made it back to the village of Vologda, the remaining Russian soldiers were in the process of surrendering, waving white handkerchiefs in their gloved hands and probably hoping they wouldn’t be shot out of spite. When Watkins’s vehicle pulled up to the largest concentration of enemy soldiers, they dropped the rear hatch of the vehicle to let the five Royal Marines exit and help secure the prisoners.
Surveying the scene around them, Watkins saw several burning vehicles, and half a dozen homes in the small village that were currently on fire. Now that the shooting had stopped, a lot of civilians began to exit their homes, many of them crying in agony at the sight of what had just happened to their tightknit community. A couple of fathers and mothers who were cradling young children in their arms rushed toward the British soldiers, pleading with them for medical help for their little ones who had been injured in the fighting.
This was the part of war Watkins hated the most — the innocent civilians who had no say in the fighting and became ensnared when the bullets start to fly between the two warring factions. A shoot-out in or near a city often resulted in innocent civilians being caught in the crossfire. He wiped a tear from his eye before anyone could see it.
The Marines motioned for the injured children and other civilians to gather near the back of one of the vehicles, while the only two medics in the group did their best to work on them. Fortunately, one of the Russian prisoners was also a medic and offered his services to help the injured civilians.
Sergeant Jones looked at Watkins, pleading with his eyes but not saying a word. Watkins nodded his approval, and Jones walked over to the Russians, pulling his knife from its cover and cutting the zip tie restraints on the man’s hands. Then Jones guided him toward one of the injured kids. The Russian soldier spoke softly and soothingly to the child as he did his best to bandage his wound until he could receive proper medical care.
Looking at the damage, Watkins couldn’t help but think to himself, “This all could’ve been prevented.” If they had had air support or helicopters to rely upon, none of these civilians would have been harmed. “We need to slow down this offensive until we can get proper support,” he reflected.
Once the Allies had secured the Russian port of Severodvinsk and captured Archangelsk, the British commander in charge of the Allied force had insisted upon a rapid advance of their expeditionary force toward Moscow, only 1,200 kilometers away. In nonhostile conditions and with fair weather, one could travel the M-8 from Severodvinsk to Moscow in roughly eighteen hours, so clearly the thought of rapidly capturing Moscow had been an alluring proposition that would have been hard to resist.
The challenge the Allies now faced was one of logistics. As winter continued to settle in, the waters of the White Sea would completely freeze over, preventing them from bringing in more supplies from Britain or America. This part of Russia also suffered from a serious lack of infrastructure. There were no major supply hubs or petrol dumps the Allies could capture, and little in the way of airfields they could take over to establish their own proper airfields. The airport they had successfully seized, Talagi Airport outside of Archangelsk, was in a terrible state of disrepair, and now it was several hundred kilometers away from the rapidly changing front lines.
The next airport they hoped to seize would be in Vologda. Once they captured the city and airport there, the British anticipated creating a forward base, moving in a couple of squadrons of F-35s and F/A-18s from the carriers that were still operating in the Barents Sea, at least until additional aircraft could be flown in from Iceland and Norway.