Strong hands grabbed him and pulled him under the cover of a slight overhang, Stef was looking into his face and he could see his mouth working but either no words were coming out or the shelling had deafened him. Eventually the ground stopped trembling and the silence was replaced by a high-pitched tone in his ears.
Pat pulled himself to his feet, his head still ringing, and with Bill and Stef assisting him he scrambled unsteadily up the slope to where he had been previously. He gaped at the damage and destruction that had been wrought in so short a time. Where 3 Company’s command post had been was now just a hole in the ground, the logs that had helped support its sandbag roof were now splinted and charred, scattered about the immediate area along with shredded sandbags and remains that no longer resembled anything human. Back along the track the Defence Platoons Warrior was lying on its side and burning furiously but there was no sign of the men who had travelled here with him. The two shell craters in which they had been taking cover were now joined together into one elongated hole. All that remained was a Kevlar helmet hanging by a strap from the only remaining limb attached to a still standing but mortally wounded pine tree, a cloth name tape neatly sown to the DPM cover identified the owner simply as ‘Higgins’.
The noise in his ears rose in pitch so as to be excruciatingly painful but then it faded, and he could hear the crackle of flames nearby and the crack of tank guns beyond. He flinched at the sound of shells passing overhead, and their detonations on the 8 Platoon positions, which were now in the hands of the enemy.
Turning to the two snipers he gestured at the tree-covered hillside.
“Perhaps we didn’t get all of those infiltrators of theirs, I want you two to get up there and track them down…” his voiced petered out because both the snipers were shaking their heads.
“That wasn’t Soviet artillery that did this sir, it was our own.”
Pat looked confused; not quite grasping what was being said.
“Someone fucked up sir…we got through to the battalion CP and got the guns to adjust their fire, but it was our one five fives that did this.”
There was nothing else really to say, except perhaps that sometimes shit happens in war, so the snipers left him then, finding a spot for themselves to the right of where the CP had been so that they could engage anyone attempting to hinder the 3 Company platoons withdrawal.
Pat looked over at the remains of the CP, thinking that whoever had been responsible had well and truly paid for that mistake, but he was now without a company commander or a headquarters staff for 3 Company. It was a cold and clinical way of regarding the death of six of his men in the CP and the ten from Defence Platoon, but grief was an indulgence that must wait.
4 Company were engaging the left flank of the Romanian 112th MRR, the enemy had approached boldly enough up to the point where the sunken lane cut across their axis of advance. The defile was now cluttered with the wreckage of Czech armoured vehicles, many still burning, and the Romanians found themselves in the same position as the 23rd MRR had been at that point. Only a handful of places allowed the vehicles to pass across to the fields on NATO’s side of the lane, and the smoke from the Czech vehicles were proving a double-edged sword. It shielded the vehicles on the eastern side from view, but command and control went out of the window. In dribs and drabs the fighting vehicles negotiated the gaps in the lane and attempted to reform in their original unit formations on the far side, where there was no cover that would allow that to happen.
The Hussar’s 1 Troop, the helicopter gunships and the Coldstreamers Milan crews selected, and then destroyed, targets with ease until the Romanians in desperation renewed their charge.
4 Company’s lines weren’t penetrated, the last vehicle of that particular wave was despatched at about the same time as half a dozen 152mm shells landed just west of the lane, delivering a smoke screen that was too thin and too late.
Jim Popham had control of the battalion well in hand and there were no problems on the left of the battalion, but command of 3 Company was another matter.
The young officers commanding the company’s three platoons were unsuitable candidates for command of a company, two were too inexperienced and the third was badly wounded. Pat called the battalion CP and ordered his Adjutant to grab a competent radio operator and come forward in a Warrior to take command of the company before changing to the 3 Company net. According to 9 Platoons commander his sergeant was calling in adjustments to the artillery fire and eleven survivors of 8 Platoon, four of them wounded, had made it out and into his location. The seven able bodied had been amalgamated into his call sign and the wounded were being evacuated uphill to where Pat now was. That at least was good news, and he went on to report that although 7 Platoon had been pinned in their trenches, the properly adjusted fires had allowed them time to booby-trap their trenches before withdrawing, and they were now moving to the rear of 9 Platoon in preparation to dig in.
Pat made his way forward and met 7 Platoon; toiling under the burden of not just their own personal kit but boxes of link and extra grenades, 51mm rounds, spare Milan rounds and 94mm LAWs. It was the platoons cache of spare ammunition and all too precious to be abandoned or destroyed in place. The quarried obstacle was drawing curses and the heavy stores had to be passed up, hand over hand, before they could negotiate it, but the men worked together well as a team and it was soon accomplished.
A couple of months before Pat could never have conceived of fully functioning platoons made up of his guardsmen and American paratroopers, the mind sets for one thing were almost alien to one another, and the basic tactics that were second nature to these men of different army’s had seemed at odds. Yet here he was looking at Yorkshiremen and Texans, Geordies and Californians who seemed joined at the hip.
Pat’s orders were simply for them to dig in, tie in again with the Argyll’s platoon on their right and have it all completed ten minutes ago, if not sooner. They got on with it, without undue questions and the very minimum of fuss, which allowed Pat to tag on behind the wounded as he made his way back up slope in the failing light to where Timothy had now arrived to assume command. Below him the artillery fires shifted from the overrun positions to further east, where the next formation of enemy vehicles had appeared. Pat paused for a moment, watching the enemy tanks spilling over the edge of the hill across the valley, driving hard for the valleys floor. There were just so damn many of them that it seemed for every Soviet vehicle they killed another ten appeared in its place. He thought briefly of the battalion his son was attached to, and thanked God that the Soviet’s had forced their crossing to the south of the Light Infantry positions. He had enough concerns without having to worry about his son’s safety too.
The ex-Adjutant, and now OC 3 Company, extended a hand and pulled Pat up the last couple of feet onto level ground.
“Thank you Timothy, and apology’s for dragging you out here but I needed someone with more seasoning than the company subalterns.”
Tim had taken stock of the situation and his radio operator was already ensconced in the remains of the CP.
“I’m using this sir.” Timothy told his CO.
“It may have no top cover but it is at least below ground level, and of course one dearly hopes that lightning will not strike twice.”
Pat nodded his acceptance.
“It’s your company now so you do what you must?” The more junior officer shrugged and then after a moment he spoke.
“You realise sir that this is now the weak link in the line, the Hussars can only support us for so long before Soviet infantry start taking them out. I don’t have the manpower left to defend them, and we cannot hope to hold out against anything larger than an APC company unsupported?”