Dean had to shout into the mouthpiece, such was the noise erupting all around him. “Two-Two-Alpha. Received and understood. Over.”
“Armoured units will cover your withdrawal. Make it quick, Dean. Alpha will consolidate there. Out.”
Dean held up two digits to Colour Sergeant Rose who nodded his understanding. He knew the order to pull back was due. They couldn’t hold out here for much longer. Casualties were stacking up, and the losses of Chieftains had been steadily climbing.
Dean keyed his handset and notified all his units that they would be withdrawing in two minutes. The mortar section was still going strong. It had miraculously survived a counter-battery strike, having moved location two minutes prior to the salvo of 122mm shells landing on their old firing base. Dean ordered them to fire a salvo of 82mm bombs for the full two minutes before they too would race to their next location northwest of Coppenbrugge. He knew it wouldn’t be long before they were outflanked. The Soviet airborne, tasked with pushing the British units back, had headed for the high ground on both sides of Coppenbrugge so they could make headway and come in behind the Royal Green Jackets (RGJ) and 14/20th King’s Hussars situated in the valley.
It was falling apart.
With the enemy across the River Leine to the north, 22nd Armoured Brigade, positioned further south, had been hit on their left flank. After the remnants of the 62nd Guards Tank Regiment and the Independent Tank Regiment, had crossed the River Leine south of Hanover, they had smashed into the flanks of the Royal Green Jackets. Taking advantage, two of the Soviet airborne battalions fighting around Gronau had pressed the three 14/20th King’s Hussars’ combat teams west of the River Leine. One airborne battalion had attacked from the south, moving deep into Gronau, nearly cutting off Bravo Troop and the supporting units who were still on the eastern bank. A second airborne battalion thrust south, to help close the trap. The British units had raced across the first of the Gronau bridges, the engineers destroying it as the tracks of Lieutenant Alex Wesley-Jones’s Chieftain, the last British unit to cross, had barely touched the opposite bank. A small engineer unit, supported by a mixed force consisting of drivers from the Royal Corps of Transport, signallers and a small detachment of Royal Military Police, held the second bridge as Alex and his small force raced to get off the small island that sat between the two bridges.
The final bridge was blown five minutes before the southernmost airborne battalion closed the trap. All British units were ordered to withdraw, at speed, towards Coppenbrugge. 14/20th King’s Hussars were to defend the Coppenbrugge gap, along with Combat Team Alpha of the 2RGJ. The rest of the 2RGJ Battle Group, held back from the 4th Armoured Division, had been ordered to defend the high ground to the north and south.
Further south, the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment had been badly mauled by a massed attack from the air. Thirty sorties by ground-attack aircraft struck hard. Before the dust had even settled, elements of the 3rd Shock Helicopter Attack Regiment, twenty Hind-D helicopters, hit them before they could recover. They finally managed to extract themselves from the carnage with thirty-two Chieftains surviving to fight another day.
The dilemma for the commander of 22nd Armoured Brigade was whether to counter-attack and risk losing his remaining tanks in the mess that was once a frontline around Gronau or to pull them back to new defensive positions to plug the gaps that were forming as the 1st and 2nd Battalions, the Royal Green Jackets and the 14/20th King’s Hussars battled for survival. He chose the latter, keeping his only relatively intact armoured regiment to reform further to the rear. 2RTR raced west, heading for a position west of Hameln.
For half an hour, all three Battle Groups, in particular the RGJ and 14/20th, had got to grips with the remaining 800 men of the Soviet air-assault battalions from the 34th Airborne Assault Brigade around Benstorf. Two battalions had been parachuted into the area east of Coppenbrugge to cut off any British withdrawal and secure a passage for the following armour between the two sections of high ground. Two-Two-Alpha and Two-Two-Charlie had crashed straight through the Soviet airborne brigade’s D-30 artillery positions, Two-Two-Charlie nearly losing a track as it crushed the trails of one of the 122mm artillery guns.
22nd Armoured Brigade’s extraction from the battle was chaotic. At one point, the entire 1st Division’s area of responsibility from south of Hanover to the north of Alfeld was a mass of intermingled Soviet and British forces. At least one flight of Sepecat Jaguar ground-attack aircraft had returned to base with their full weapons’ load, unable to distinguish the boundaries between friend and foe. The Soviet 7th and 12th Guards Tank Divisions, from the 3rd Shock Army, took full advantage of the chaos. Within an hour of their advance forces crossing the River Leine, using GSP, PTS and K-61s, the first PMP pontoon bridging section was being dropped. As more and more of their forces crossed to the western bank, expanding the bridgehead and threatening to trap the retreating Western forces between themselves and the airborne forces behind, they broke out from the bridgehead.
Having battled their way out of the clutches of the Soviet airborne battalions, and now joined by a few elements of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Green Jackets, also retreating, the 14/20th collided with the Soviet airborne battalion assaulting Coppenbrugge. The 14/20th ploughed through the Soviet airborne elite, rounds from BMDs ricocheting off the Chieftain’s armour, an ASU-85 taking out a Chieftain from A-Squadron, a BRDM-Sagger damaging another from C-Squadron. Covered by the now consolidated elements of A-Company, 2RGJ, Alex and his regiment believed they were on the home run — at least, until the dreaded Hind tank hunters were unleashed, destroying two more Chieftains before they were all able to join the thin British line and turn to defend their corner.
The Scorpion tank rocked as the 76mm gun fired one of its two canister rounds that were stored on board the light reconnaissance tank. Nearly 800 pellets tore into the Soviet airborne forces attempting to outflank Combat Team Bravo, the Royal Green Jackets.
“Back, back,” ordered Lieutenant Baty.
Thomas, the tank’s driver, powered the Jaguar engine and the Scorpion, a Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked), a CVR(T), moved back fifty metres.
“Stop, stop, stop. Infantry, 200 metres, MG,” ordered Baty.
The turret vibrated as the coaxial 7.62mm machine gun sent round after deadly round down range, ripping into trees and bodies alike. After one long burst, Lance Corporal Alan Reid then fired short five to ten-round bursts. Ammunition was low: perhaps only 250 rounds left. They had been conducting a fighting withdrawal for over four hours after escaping from the confines of Gronau. Gronau was now in the clutches of the Soviet airborne. A pincer movement by the airborne force had nearly trapped them, slowly squeezing them and the British Mechanised Infantry section, along with a scattered German Jaeger unit, into a smaller and tighter space.
Once the second bridge was blown, they were released by high command, along with their sister unit, from the defence of Gronau, to bug out and race west to safety. Baty pitied the German reservists who provided cover while they fled. The Jaeger unit were having to drag their wounded and dying, some suffering horrific injuries from bombs, bullets and the dreaded chemical blister agent, to safety, yet still fight a rearguard action. Baty had seen one soldier in his early forties, his face and hands a mass of septic-looking blisters. Some of those that had burst were either red-raw or congealed. Reluctantly, he had ordered his small troop to run, seeing the staring eyes of a Jaeger captain, watching them go as he bravely rallied his men to defend themselves, care for their wounded kameraden, and attempt to escape the slowly closing claws of the enemy.