Corporal Mason helped drag Trooper Mann from the damaged Challenger tank. The crewman had a minor wound to his head from a ricochet, and a more serious wound: a smashed shoulder. The other two men were safe, ensconced with an infantry section. A mere 500 metres away, the BMD, responsible for the tank’s demise after hitting it with a Sagger missile, was still smouldering, an airborne soldier broken and battered lay close to the rear hatch, the rest of the soldiers blackened and unrecognisable in the troop compartment to the rear. After a HESH round had demolished the airborne infantry vehicle, the crew, those who had been able to escape the inferno inside, had been immediately cut down by a pintle-mounted Gympy on top of a British 432. The infantry were from the 3rd Battalion, the Queen’s Regiment, having got separated from their parent unit, and seeking support and protection from their much larger cousins. A second BMD was burning furiously a further 100 metres east. Clouds of thick, black, oily smoke funnelled upwards, an advert to anyone watching that there had been a clash between opposing forces.
The 1st Royal Tank Regiment, Royal Hussars, and 3rd Battalion, the Queen’s Regiment, had been fighting a running battle with the Soviet army between Hanover in the north and Bennigsen in the south. Not only had they been trying to prevent a crossing of the River Leine, but also to hold off repeated attacks from behind them as two battalions of Soviet airborne forces that had landed in the vicinity of Pattensen continuously harassed the British defenders.
“Lay him down here.” Lieutenant Barrett looked at Corporal Mason. “You’ve got less than a minute to get him patched up. Then we need to get out of here.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
The wind shifted slightly and the acrid smoke from the burning BMD drifted across, causing Barrett to gag. A rasping cough was needed to clear his lungs. The wind shifted again, and he looked out across the ground in front, an array of arable fields, some needing attention from the farmers who owned them. They had been pulling back between Wettbergen and Ronnenberg, making it as far as Ditterke, when they had been bounced by an airborne platoon. Two BMDs had been destroyed, but not before crippling Delta-Four-Charlie. One BMD escaped, no doubt informing their masters of the location of the British units. The unit had been pulling into a farmyard east of a small village, seeking cover from Hind-D attack-helicopters they had seen in the distance, when they were hit.
They couldn’t stay here for long. Lieutenant Barrett climbed up onto the glacis of his troop command tank, surveying the open fields to his front. To the northeast, the high ground of Benther Berg, and to the southeast, the much larger village of Gehrden. If he had a squadron of tanks here, he could see and hit any Soviet armour as soon as they were in range, such was the levelled ground.
Sergeant Glover came over from Delta-Four-Bravo. “We’ve patched up Mann as best we can, sir. He’ll be OK for a while. His shoulder’s a bloody mess though. The shrapnel that hit him almost took his arm off.”
Barrett dropped down from the Challenger and beckoned Sergeant Glover over, spreading out a map in front of him.
“Still no contact with the Squadron or Regiment as yet, sir?”
“Once they’ve sorted themselves out, I’m sure they’ll give us a rendezvous. But we need to get out of here, and soon.”
“I’m with you on that, sir.” Glover placed his personal machine gun, an SMG, on the glacis and pointed to the Mittellandkanal on the map. “We know they’ll initiate a stop-line along here somewhere. But where? It’s a bloody pig’s ear at the moment.”
“Definitely the canal. It’s a natural barrier before the Weser, but it won’t be the first one. They’ll want to slow the advance down before the Soviets reach it.”
“Should we head for Route 65 and run like hell until we meet up with the rest of our Squadron?”
“That would make sense, Sergeant, but the Soviets will be wanting to use that route to move their armour west as fast as possible. Get behind us for one thing, and keep One-Div moving back. They’ll be provided with air support to facilitate that.”
“Particularly those blasted Hinds. They’re bloody everywhere. We don’t seem to have anything to stop them.”
“So, we need to get back to our own area of operations. We’re currently in 1RTR’s area. We keep away from the 65; go west to Grossgoltern, then south to Barsinghausen. It’s a choke point, the town to the south and the high ground of Stemmer Berg to the north. We may find the rest of our unit regrouping.”
The corner of one of the farm’s outbuildings, the one Barrett’s Challenger tank was sheltering next to, exploded into a hundred fragments as the Spandrel anti-tank missile detonated, having missed its target by less than a metre. Sergeant Glover yelped as a large chunk of masonry struck him in the back, a second smaller piece smashing into the side of his knee. He dropped to the ground, his injured leg giving way.
Boompf.
Delta-Four-Bravo, on seeing the BMP-2 that had fired, despatched the enemy MICV almost immediately after the gunner who was keeping watch spotted the dust trail kicked up by the rapidly retreating vehicle attempting to make its escape and seeking out new cover to target the British tanks again. It failed, the sabot round crippling it, but four Soviet infantry escaped.
“Mount up! Mount up!” screamed Barrett as he dropped to the floor, grabbing Sergeant Glover’s webbing and pulling him onto his feet. “Can you walk?”
“Just about.”
“We need to mount up quick and get the hell out of here.”
“Move back,” yelled Lieutenant Barrett to his driver, the man’s head popping out above the driver’s hatch.
The engine, which had been ticking over, picked up revs as Tyler reversed the Challenger until it was completely hidden from view. Barrett helped Sergeant Glover to his vehicle and, with the help of the gunner and loader, secreted him into the turret where the tank would support his crippled back and weak knee.
“Sergeant Glover, give us two minutes then follow. I’ll inform you of our location on the move. Make it quick when you do move. We need to get away from this area.”
“That was a BMP-2, sir,” called Lance Corporal Frith.
“Fuck,” responded Glover. “That means they have advance elements of the new Soviet division making progress.”
“It does. Here.” Barrett handed Sergeant Glover’s SMG to the driver. “See you in two minutes.” Then he called over to the infantry section to mount up and follow him in their 432, keeping to his left flank at all times.
With that, he ran towards his own tank and clambered on board. On the orders from his commander, the driver reversed around the end of the building, stopped, turned right, then rattled in between the farm and an outbuilding, picking up speed as they crossed an open field. Barrett frantically scanned for some cover so they could protect Delta-Four-Bravo when it was their turn to pull back. He glimpsed something, a small copse a thousand metres away just southwest of the village. That would do the trick.