Lt Tony McMarn, RGJ, was the platoon commander of the Green Jackets, Captain Hector Sinclair Obediah Wantage-Ferdoux, RTR, or ‘Obi Wan’ to the troops, commanded the four Challenger 2Es. On the Brits left were the two platoons and company HQ, company headquarters, of their 52nd Infantry hosts with their ‘Bradley’ APCs, attached mortar and anti-tank sections. This was the infantry-heavy balance in their composite mechanised company.
Both men were studying maps on the engine deck of Hectors tank accompanied by Captain Daniel King, US Army of the Black Horse Cavalry, their liaison and mentor on all things American. Also, he had said with a smile
“To ensure you guys drive on the right and don’t go near the Whitehouse with matches again”.
When, a fortnight earlier, initial introductions had been made Hector had enthusiastically pumped Daniel’s hand as if trying to drag off his black skin, with a cheery,
“Call me ‘Heck’, damn glad to meet you Tone’. Daniel had been slightly taken aback.
“Tone?” was that a slur on his race or had he missed something?
Tony McMarn had seen the wary look in the cavalryman’s eyes. “Once upon a time a young Queen Victoria had enquired of a Lancer at a Ball. ‘And what exactly is the role of the Cavalry on the modern battlefield?’ The Lancer replied ‘Why Ma’am, it is simply to add tone to what would otherwise be … a vulgar brawl!’ All cavalrymen are ‘Tones’ to us, sir”. With that out of the way they had got on like a house on fire.
The other Americans of the liaison detachment, tagging along, as the Brits put it, where Master Sergeant Bart Kopak, PFC Angie Evans, driver, and Specialist Stu Jameson, the radio op.
It was the third day of the exercise and at present the Brits, and their US allies were supposed to be assisting a friendly country ward off the advances of that evil empire known so well to British servicemen, Fantasia. The American scenario had described the opposing forces as ‘Blue’ and ‘Green’ but this did not have the appropriate martial ring to the British squaddies,
“Sounds like chuffing Oxford and Cambridge boat crews having a ruck with the militant wing of the Tree Huggers” as one disgruntled Rifleman had put it. Heck proposed a name change at a local level for his ‘Toms’. Daniel objected,
“It’s our game and we will call them what we want”.
Heck had responded
“Unless you want a bunch of pissed off Toms retaking New York in the name of King George, I would humour them Tone”. So the enemy became ’Fantasian’s’ and the Toms were all smiles.
The term Toms had also been a puzzle to the Americans until Tony’s platoon sergeant had loaned a dog-eared copy of Rudyard Kipling's complete works to young Angie Evans. ‘Tommy Atkins’, the name he gave the common British soldier as a breed, had solved the puzzle.
The allied forces were at this point in the game dispersed along the ‘border’ with a tank heavy brigade in reserve until the Fantasian intentions became clear.
Both sides’ were probing with recce's, or recons as the Americans preferred to call them.
The Brits patch was a rather bare arsed region of real estate. Restrictions on ‘digging in’ had seemed an alien concept to the Brits, however at the initial exercise briefing the Riflemen had taken that piece of news with smiles. Every time a British infantryman stops in the field for longer than the time it takes for ‘a brew’, the squaddies term for tea, the picks and shovels come out and shallow ‘fire scrapes’ are started. If it should become a prolonged stop then these fire scrapes are extended to become two man trenches and then ‘shelter bays’ are added for protection from artillery and a dry place to sleep.
Digging-in is a way of life, but that does not mean it’s a popular activity.
With the entrenching tools being taboo items, good field craft had become the only solution. Heck deployed his pair of snipers to set up OPs, observation posts, on particularly bare arse features, and the Riflemen to those more conducive to invisibility.
Heck had returned from an ‘O Group’ at company headquarters with his American boss, a stocky mid-western captain with a drawl Heck ripped the piss out of at every opportunity.
“Y’all ok?” Captain Dave Gilham would enquire, “Well it was when I left it tied up by the boathouse. I can always ring Mrs Heck and check?”
He was now giving Tony a warning order for the nights patrolling when Heck’s radio op stuck his head out of the tanks turret with a headset in hand
“Boss, its India Three Three Delta… contact, grid 277,872 near as they can tell, bearing eleven zero zero mag, two Bradleys, lots of dust ‘n shit a few miles behind ‘em!” 33D were his snipers. If anyone were going to see enemy movement first it would be them with their powerful spotting telescope. Heck passed on the contact report to Company HQ and told Tony to hang-fire on the patrols before shouting out to everyone in the location.
“Stand To!”
It was welcomed with muttered “Ah, bollocks!” by those in various stages of feeding themselves as they ‘binned’ their ‘scoff’, and hurriedly got ready to have a serious word with the interlopers who’d ruined supper.
The fight was on.
Constantine parked his car in a plush residential street not far from the barracks that were home to the Kings Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. He looked across at Svetlana, her face was in shadow, unreadable and she stared straight ahead.
After a shower at her flat and a horrendous age drying her long hair she had stood unashamedly naked while he had examined her. With her hair held in her hands, bunched atop her head he had applied cream to the burns between her shoulder blades and the bruises in other areas. She had been completely unabashed, which is more than could be have been said for him. He had been divorced for over a year and had been acutely aware of Svetlana’s naked state. His taste in women was not for the big boned, broad faced, childbearing-hipped variety, so many of his countrymen sought. His wife had been a ballerina, slim and lovely, elfin-like beside him.
The poor, irregular pay had irked her. Their small state provided flat with second and third hand furniture was not the future she had envisaged at marriage. He had hoped that bringing her with him to London would have satisfied her. Better accommodation, more and regular pay, less drab surroundings. It seemed that it fuelled her dreams of a better life rather than solved their problems. She had embarked on an affair with a wealthy Russian entrepreneur with offices in London. They parted and six months ago she had become Mrs wealthy entrepreneur. He wished her well but missed her keenly.
Svetlana was stunning, slim waisted, drum tight flat stomach, full firm breasts and her skin two-toned by the tiny pale strips against her otherwise tanned skin. He had never seen a woman completely shaved down there before, and he had certainly never seen a pierced clitoris before either. In answer to his thick tongued queries, at least it sounded that way to him, and she replied that the piercing enhanced her already higher than average libido, ensuring multiple orgasms, and finally that she endured laser hair removal as pubic hair was not conducive to the underwear she wore, nodding toward a clothes stand of drying panties. A deeply blushing Constantine had looked across at the items on display and remarked that they weren’t underpants; they were pirate’s eye patches… .with gussets! Svetlana’s laughter had peeled throughout the flat.
Bodywork touched up; she had slipped into one of the aforementioned articles, which only served to worsen his heart rate. Constantine had escaped into the kitchen to make coffee and food for them both whilst she finished dressing. Her apparent recovery was remarkable after the experiences of earlier in the day. He could understand why the sparrow school had recruited her. ‘Sparrows’ were the young women used to bait the honey traps. There was a well-known term; ‘A hard-on knows no conscience’. In his opinion the Pope would have tossed his holy bible over his shoulder with a “Sod it, who believes this stuff anyway” and begun tearing off his robes 30 seconds after being confronted by even a fully clothed Svetlana. He could not understand though, why that department had let her go?