A TOW missile left the ITV’s dual launcher in an upward arc, its operator expertly bringing it down to strike the top of the T-72’s turret that the 11 tank had targeted. The thinner armour was no challenge for the warhead and the turret parted company with the chassis.
The ITV’s commander looked for more targets, peering through his periscope he swung it to the right, recognizing a clutch of waving antennae’s as they passed through his vision so he swung back, lowered his angle of view and stared directly down a T-90’s barrel.
Franklin heard the ITV blow up, the seven remaining missiles in its storage racks blew also, adding to the destruction with their sympathetic detonation. A fireball rose above the fighting position it had occupied, and the twisted aluminium hull began to burn.
The tanks and AFVs had appeared a few minutes after the infantry attack in the north had begun, with fewer tanks in number than the southern group, they were nevertheless dividing his fighting power.
13 fired to the south and missed, it reversed but received yet another hammer blow. The Soviet sabot screamed away into the night, a fast moving dot of light until it passed from view. The 13 tank had been struck twice now and survived, the crew should have been feeling lucky but no one was in a betting mood.
With the loss of the ITV and the 12 tank the company was reduced to 11, 13 and half a dozen Javelins for killing tanks. Pretty soon the enemy commander was going to figure out that the Americans were now covering three sides with only two M1s and a bunch of dismounts.
The force to the north was a mechanized company with a tank platoon in support. It was closing, moving in bounds across a wide front that prevented the defenders from concentrating their limited firepower.
Over to the south, five tanks and four BTR-70s had managed to work around until they had the eastern corner of the National Guard position flanked.
Had this been a table top exercise Franklin would have admired the coordination between the enemy tanks and Sagger teams. While one engaged his positions the other moved.
Franklin had no effective way of coordinating his own unit’s fire as that damn music was still foxing the airwaves.
11’s turret was moving, its main gun tracking a target visible to its thermal sights but not to Lt Franklin Stiles naked eyes. It fired, and a T-90 that had just popped out from behind a clump of trees to the west exploded. Franklin punched the air triumphantly as the M1 pulled back to change position. If they could just keep sniping in this fashion they could yet win the battle. A Sagger streaked in from the south and struck the Abrams raised rump as it reversed out of the hull down position. A flash of flame and the tank was concealed from view by black smoke. When the smoke cleared the tank was hung there at the top of the fighting positions ramp, smoke issuing from its wrecked engine pack through the small molten hole in its armour and the engine compartments air vents. The crew had not bailed out though, and with a squeal of sprockets the machine rolled forwards, back into the position it had just left. It was now a stationary hardpoint, or a static target depending on which way you looked at it. Its machine guns opened fire, attempting to drive off a platoon of approaching infantry who were using the ground with skill.
The second platoon squad at the eastern corner cut loose with their M-240 and M16s before scattering in the face of an approaching tank.
A pair of heavy machineguns tore in the earth about the northern squad’s holes, the fire was coming from two more MBTs, a T-72 and a T-90 that were just a hundred metres out and closing fast. The fire was pinning the squad, preventing them from rising up and engaging them with their last Javelin. The enemy tanks task was made all the easier as the holes were illuminated by the flames from the burning ITV, as was the 13 tanks rear. The M1 was oblivious of its peril, engaging a target to the south and unaware it would in moments be in the sights of three main tank guns.
Franklin found himself frozen in place, like an unwitting spectator watching a car wreck about to happen. Which of the enemy tanks would destroy the company’s last serviceable M1?
The tank entering the defensive position from the east fired first, and the northern T-90 shuddered to a halt and caught fire. The T-72’s turret rounded on the newcomer even as that MBT’s gun came to bear. The T-72 fired before it could reload and it seemed to stagger but the round failed to penetrate and its own main gun stayed fixedly tracking. Now only fifty metres from the T-72 it fired, its round targeted on the turret ring. At that range it could not miss and the T-72 was struck at its most vulnerable spot, exploding in spectacular fashion.
Unaware that his jaw was hanging open in amazement Franklin’s instinct for self-preservation did kick in as he detected the sound of an approaching freight train. The open ground to the west lit up with strobe-like flashes as 155mm shells airburst over the Romanian infantry, but Franklin did not see it, he was doing his very best to stay flat against the muddy surface.
Tank guns were firing in the night but no one was firing on the position anymore. The strange tank halted and a hatch opened.
“Buona sera, Tenente…the cavalry, it has arrived!” declared Lt Col Lorenzo Rapagnetta with a grin and a flourish.
South of the autobahns traffic point the D Company Headquarters of 1 Wessex were quartered in the premises of a large and well known furniture department. Not for them the crib of mud, folding stretcher or camp bed of green canvas that had shrunk and defied reassembly. Each man and woman of company HQ reposed upon eco-friendly renewable pine, and beneath duvets of sustainable cotton.
It was not all beer and skittles though, they were again feeding from Compo rations and boil-in-the-bag Meals Rarely Edible as their appetites’ for Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam had been tested to destruction.
1 Wessex had joined 3(UK) Mechanised Brigade after the NATO armies hurried withdrawal from north of Berlin to south of the Elbe and Saale Rivers, following the invasion of Poland.
The part-time soldiers from Bournemouth and Poole in Dorsetshire had stepped from peaceful civilian life into a maelstrom at Magdeburg, but they had held until relieved even though D Company could no longer pass muster.
D Company was detached from the battalion and now had the task of securing the bridge and autobahn junction while replacements from the UK brought them back up to strength. They were not there yet and the battle for the Vormundberg was reaching critical mass. At dawn the company was to begin preparing defensive positions west of the Mitterland Canal for the US 4 Corps and ‘unspecified elements currently defending the Vormundberg’, the company commander was stating during his O Group’s ‘Execution: General Outline’ section.
The company signals rep pressed him on that vague point.
“Sir, if I know which units are going where I can save us a lot of confusion later.” the Signals Platoon corporal waited with pencil poised.
“Whoever makes it out.” stated the company’s permanent staff instructor, unbidden from his seat at the back.
At the conclusion of the O Group the platoon commanders of 13, 14 and 15 platoons had gone into a huddle about the map board and their platoon sergeants had descended upon the CQMS, attempting to extract kit. It was always the way.
‘Radar’, the company clerk, entered the room with the report of gunfire and explosions north of the town. Jamming was preventing the company sergeant major from contacting any of the platoons or the Dutch tank troop in the next town to the south, along the autobahn 391. He had sent runners instead. That broke up the huddle and the scrum for replacement equipment, the platoon command elements hurrying away to rejoin their men and the company commander stepping outside to listen.