In their fighting positions at the autobahn, the paratroopers exchanged glances as the NATO barrage continued beyond its usual hours’ worth. They were all tired from the lack of sleep that sixteen hours’ of shelling in the last twenty-four had brought. The company commander at the autobahn called his forward OP, a hand clamped to his free ear in order to hear above the noise of bursting shells, but was reassured by the answer he received. His command post was constructed of concrete rubble, and wooden fence posts removed from the nearby fields supported the roof, giving the occupiers roughly 4 feet of headroom. It would have been wide enough to hold four men, but two manpack radios occupied one side with their antennae’s poking up through the rubble roof. Vision was courtesy of a 6”x3” slit at the far end facing the expected threat. The ground trembled and bucked with the impacts, and shrapnel lashed the air. This barrage was keying up the troops to await an attack that may materialise, but so far none had. The enemy were indulging in psychological warfare with them, seeking to wear them down, reflected the company commander, it was working too. He replaced the handset and rolled to one side, lifting a nightscope to peer west along the empty autobahn.
The paratrooper who acted as the company commanders runner, orderly and general dogsbody, the all necessary ‘gopher’, was heating water for coffee in a mess tin. Because of the dust and grit that filled the air, he had a larger mess tin held over the filled vessel to keep the crap out of it, so his attention was on his present task. Two minutes later he poured the hot water onto coffee powder and crawled up the shelter to his officer, who appeared to be resting.
He did not see the broken glass until he put his weight on his left hand.
“Ubl'yudok!” Bastard, he cursed and set the mug in his right hand down, whilst he plucked the shard out. He hadn’t noticed the glass in the past couple of days, so he looked for the source and found a smashed nightscope. It was an instinctive reaction that made him look out through the vision slit, for the assumed shell crater that had been associated with the damaged scope. As his face came into view Big Stef put a round into one of his eyes as well, before changing his firing position and looking for more firing slits near radio antennae’s.
The full weight of the NATO guns focused on the junction for twenty minutes, and did not lift until the advancing Challengers and Warriors 120mm and 30mm cannon were taking the enemy strong points under direct fire, and the Guardsmen had deployed from the AFVs and began to skirmish forward in the assault.
Whilst the Coldstreamers two rifle companies led the assault on the Russian forward positions, the American paratroops followed on behind, where they could pass through the Guards and come to grips with their Russian counterparts in the depth positions beyond.
Mention ‘skirmishing’ to a British infantryman, and his eyes will not show wild enthusiasm. The infantrymen work in pairs, one will put down covering fire whilst his oppo rolls to one side, gets up and moves forward in a jinking run, drops, rolls again and puts down covering fire while his mate then moves up. The distance run is calculated by the time that it takes for a good opponent to select a target, aim and fire, which is about three seconds. You roll before getting up in case the enemy noted where you were firing from, and has drawn a bead on the spot, waiting for you to get up. You roll when you get down at the end of your forward rush, in case the enemy noted where you disappeared from sight and is waiting for you to stick your head up behind your weapon to commence covering fire. bergens are dropped before skirmishing takes place but it still leaves you carrying a hell of a lot of gear and it is absolutely knackering. It takes a fair few, three-second dashes to cover even a hundred metres.
A favourite way of the Brecon instructors to judge the quality of their latest batch of student’s is to get them into full NBC protective kit and skirmish them up the side of the Brecon Beacons. The exercise continues until the instructors can see the levels of vomit reach the bottom of the visors, inside the masks. The practice is best filed under ‘Character building’ in the filing cabinet of life’s rich tapestry.
With the Warriors rapid firing 30mm cannon and the infantry gun group gimpy’s providing solid fire support, the Guards skirmished to within yards of the Russian positions. Section commanders kept their men on the ground there briefly by holding up a fresh magazine and a bayonet, which were then placed on the elderly but reliable SLRs. Since British infantry first formed line and fixed bayonets a few hundred years ago, they have been regarded as the best at wielding a weapon tipped with sharp metal fashioned in Sheffield, and with a bit of guts behind it too, of course.
Almost winded by getting that far, apprehensive at probably never having done this before for real, the Guardsmen closed the gap between themselves and their enemy, still skirmishing but now only kneeling to fire.
“Don’t bunch!” screamed the section commanders at their riflemen, as they started to gang up on enemy positions, making themselves easy targets for machine guns. The section commanders were also looking over their shoulders at the rear and holding up clenched fists, the signal for their gun groups. Now that the riflemen were too close for the gunners to safely continue providing cover, they needed to be brought up. Once the gun group commanders acknowledged the signal, the commanders pointed at where they now wanted them. The ‘number one’, the gunner, carried out a rapid make-safe of the gun, snapped the belt of linked ammunition about thirty rounds down and made off at a dead run with the gimpy inverted and reversed on his shoulder. The number two and the gun group commander bringing up the boxes of linked, the bags containing spare barrels and the cleaning/tool kit.
The L1A1 SLR is a semi-automatic, gas and spring operated, self-loading rifle, which means it is not an automatic weapon, but there is always a round ready to go provided there are rounds in the magazine. The longer length, 44.5” was more suited than the carbine sized SA-80 for bayonet fighting, and the Guardsmen now used it to take cold steel to the Russians with gusto and a roar. Grenades did not always precede the way, there were plenty of suitably sized lumps of rubble to hand to encourage the enemy to quit their fire trenches and meet the British above ground when these ‘grenades’ landed at the feet of the trenches occupants.
An SLR has a distinctive metallic ringing undertone when it is fired; rapidly expanding gases propel the bullet up the barrel, where half way along some of the gases find an aperture. Still expanding, the gases are channelled by the groove in the gas plug and encounter the head of a spring-loaded piston, which is forced back by the pressure. The foot of the piston in turn pushes back the breech block and slide that compose the working parts, continuing even after the hinged tail at rear of the working parts encounters the head of the return spring in the rifles butt. As the working parts move back, an extractor lug ejects the spent case out of the right side of the weapon. Once the gases have pushed the piston all the way to the rear, a vent is uncovered and the gases dissipate, allowing the return spring to push the working parts forward again, collecting a fresh round from the magazine as it does so and pushing it into the breech. The pistons spring uncoils and propels the piston forward, where its head strikes the base of the gas plug producing the distinctive ringing sound. The entire operation takes less than half a second to complete, and the rifle is ready to fire again.
The sounds of firing SLRs, AKMs and the detonation of grenades took over as the AFVs targets were obscured by their own sides’ infantry. The Guardsmen knew what had happened to their mates, who’d been left behind at the river, and it didn’t matter to them that their enemy then had been Czech, they laid into the Russian paratroopers with a vengeance. There was not a single man involved that was not scared, and that went for both sides. No one would show fear to their mates as they threw grenades and rushed in whilst its shock effect still held good. They were frightened as they parried opponent’s thrusts and followed through with butt strokes or thrusts with the bayonet. They weren’t fighting for Queen and Country, nor even for ‘The Regiment’, they fought for each other.