Dougal looked down at the sleeping Sergeant Blackmore and wondered if he should stay aloof and instead delegate his platoon sergeant? Dougal hefted his C8 assault rifle and left the trench to lie beside it, pausing to peer through the rubber eyepiece. In the same way an ordinary pair of binoculars will assist your ability to see at night, so too do the unpowered weapons sights by magnifying the available light, even if that light is poor.
Sweeping from the platoons left flank to the right flank he saw just empty open ground beyond the woods edge. Belly down, he snaked across the intervening space between the trenches.
Both men were asleep on their feet, an act achievable by the truly exhausted in the most uncomfortable of circumstances. Dougal did not know what made him raise his weapon to again use the sight but the ground beyond the trees was no longer empty, four men were moving toward this very spot in single file, moving carefully, 'ghost walking' to avoid noise and sudden, eye catching movement.
The lead man carried a weapon the same as his own Canadian army variant of the M16, and wore the same French style ballistic helmet, but the remainder were tucked in close behind him and their weapons were not visible either.
The GPMG had a starlight scope attached to the tripod in place of a C2 sight and Dougal slipped into the trench between both sleeping sentries and switched the sight on.
A low pitched whine announced that the sight was working, he pressed his face to the eyepiece and immediately the approaching men were more clearly picked out in varied shades of green. The picture was better than that of his Suit sight but the lack of any stars light meant the scene was darker than it could be. Dougal thumbed on the sights laser torch attachment.
The laser torch provides a light source similar to that of a clear starry sky, but it not only sucks batteries dry with frightening speed, it also acts as a beacon for battlefield laser detectors so should be used with extreme caution.
The young Canadian took a long look at the higher definition picture before switching the laser off.
The sentry to his left came awake as the GPMG was cocked.
“Halt!” Dougal hissed as loud as he judged necessary to be heard by the first of the four.
He saw a momentary hesitation in stride but they continued.
“It’s Molineux and the listening patrol, sir.” The sentry whispered, staring through own C8’s Suit Sight.
Dougal had been able to see the name tag on the lead man’s combat jacket and indeed it did read ‘Molineux’
There were a number of reasons why the patrol could be returning, such as to report the approach of the enemy in person if their radio had gone U/S, unserviceable.
It would have been easy to allow the sentry’s judgement to over-ride his own; after all he was a veteran, unlike his screw-up platoon commander.
Instead of being reassured though, Dougal felt hairs rising on the back of his neck. Ignoring the sentry, his thumb depressed the safety lug.
“HALT…hands up!”
It was seemingly implausible that all four could not have heard the challenge, and they were now almost too close.
He unlocked the tripod, allowing the weapon to be traversed and elevated manually.
“No sir, its Molineux…”
The GPMG roared, the muzzle flash illuminating the scene and the long burst ripping through the lead man and the three clustered behind.
“STOP, its Molineu…!”
“STAND TO!” Dougal shouted, seeing figures appearing in his sights out of the dead ground before them, a hundred and fifty metres beyond the edge of the wood line.
Rounds cracked passed and the sentry to his right awoke only to drop without a sound to the bottom of the trench, his helmet spinning away in a scarlet haze of blood, fragments of skull and grey lumps of brain matter.
Two PK machine guns, close cousins to the GPMG in Dougal’s grasp, were firing on the gimpy’s muzzle flash.
Startled awake by the burst of fire from the GPMG, Sgt Blackmore immediately looked across to where his young platoon commander should have been, but wasn’t.
Where the hell was the idiot? Then of course he heard Dougal shouting “Stand-to!” and saw the cause. Blackmore made a frantic grab for the Claymore clickers.
Exhausted men, rudely awoken, and only a few of whom were quick enough to put rounds down, and then not entirely accurately as tired eyes take some moments to focus.
The desultory muzzle flashes were encouraging rather than inhibiting, and the relative lack of accuracy emboldened the Russian infantry officers.
Two infantry companies had quietly made their way into the dead ground between the turnip field and the woods, waiting in the rain as the four specialist reconnaissance troopers had attempted to enter the Canadian’s lines by subterfuge.
Plan A was for the sentries to be despatched with some dexterous knife work thereby allowing the waiting infantry to follow on with bloody effect.
Plan B was to rush the positions on a narrow front, one company behind the other should the first course of action fail.
The company commander of the second company was a cautious man and ordered his company forward by half sections. It was a slow business and a tiring one, but it kept half of his men in cover and able to put down supporting fire for the remainder at any one time. It was in contrast to the leading company’s advance.
Instead of employing fire and manoeuvre the lead attacking company now broke into a slow jog as folding bayonets were swung into position and locked into place, whereupon the men opened their legs, picking up speed. This became an energetic dash to close with the enemy before they could rouse themselves. There was no shouting, no war cries, just the pounding of two hundred and twenty boots against the sodden ground. The panting breath of a hundred and ten men exerting themselves into as close to a sprint as the equipment they bore would allow.
Adrenaline surged, hearts pounded…
A hundred metres…
…..fifty…
……..thirty…
Those at the forefront were pounding ahead of the pack and could make out the outline of individual tree trunks on the edge of the wood.
Heads lowered and arms began to straighten, extending bayonet tipped assault rifles toward an enemy they would be amongst in just a few more strides.
Before the wood line there blossomed black clouds of smoke with the flash of detonating claymore mines at ground level. The Russian infantry charge met a wall of ball bearings that turned men into shredded, bloody rags.
The echo of the blasts reverberated in rapid succession cross fields, hills and dales, giving way to screams from the injured, the mortally wounded, the disfigured and blinded.
Over a hundred bodies lay in the open between the dead ground and the wood line. Most lay unmoving but some writhed in agony, screaming for aid, or in the case of the mortally wounded, calling out for their mothers as men who know they are dying will often do.
For a few moments the firing paused, both sides seemingly shocked by the mines effects and Sgt Blackmore was startled by a figure landing with a splash beside him.
Blackmore released the mines firing clickers and grasped his folding shovel. He was in the process of raising it up high for a killing stroke when the figure jammed one of the earpieces of the R/T set against his right ear and spoke in a raised, but controlled voice into the microphone, a contact report followed by a mortar fire control order.
“Hello Zero this is Six Nine, contact, contact, contact… one hundred, one hundred plus enemy infantry advancing to my front, out to you…..hello Five Zero Charlie, this is Six Nine, infantry in the open, shoot Foxtrot Papa Foxtrot Six Zero Alpha, over…..roger that…wait, over!”