Despite the rain they all of them paused on the large and empty car park listening to machine gun fire and the crack of tank guns, and then there came the unmistakeable sound of armoured vehicles on the northbound off ramp of autobahn 391.
“They made good time!” the OC remarked as the first dark silhouettes of tanks came into view.
All three tanks opened fire with their machine guns before turning their attention to the company’s soft skinned vehicles parked along the store wall beneath camouflage nets, and once they were wrecked it was the building itself that received their main guns attentions.
Sweden’s flagship furniture outlet for Lower Saxony was in flames, the company and platoon command elements for D Company, 1 Wessex were all dead and the battle was only ten minutes old.
The runners did indeed make good time in reaching Wolfenbüttel to the south, and had they been despatched twenty seconds later they would have met a troop of enemy tanks joining the 391 from Bieinrode Strasse.
Wolfenbüttel was largely abandoned but far from in darkness. A Romanian 91st Tank Regiment’s troop of T-90s had arrived before the 1 Wessex runners and surprised the Dutch troops, destroying two unmanned Leopard 2s where they sat in berms upon the town centres small park.
The Dutchmen fought back, the third Leopard knocking out one T-90 before itself being destroyed, and a second Soviet tank engaged in that particular fight was lost when it attempted to drive through a glass fronted bar and outflank the Leopard. The floor had given way, trapping it quite thoroughly in the beer cellar where surviving Dutch tankers finished off the trapped tank and crew with two jerry cans of petrol and a WP grenade. The fire spread to the neighbouring shops, and so there was quite a bit of light.
On the autobahn the appearance of the enemy armour so soon after the solo action of L/Cpl Green, RMP, destroying a Landrover, coupled with the jamming of the radio net was seen as a possible indication that the Vormundberg had fallen, but there was no time for a debate.
13 Platoon left one of its two-man AT teams in their trench to the west but had the other engage targets of opportunity to the north, on the airfield side.
14 Platoon’s southern pair on the bottom of Autobahn 391’s fly-over was ordered to pick up their kit and double away up the incline to find a point where they could engage tanks on the airfield. They duly did so, arriving panting and out of breath above Autobahn 2’s westbound carriageway. The other 14 Platoon AT team had just fired a round at a charging T-90 on the Braunschweig airfield and missed by a wide margin. The crippled tank was beyond extreme range, although stationary, and having seen the light anti-tank rocket fired from the autobahn overpass the team became its next target. A main gun round screamed low over the guardrail and green tracer from its coaxial 12.7mm machinegun began to work the firing point over. It was an uneven contest and discretion being the better part of valour they backed off back to their previous covering position.
The helicopters had all been reduced to burning wrecks, the fuel bowser had blown up and the Soviet tanks were systematically destroying stacked pallets of ammunition and stores that had cost so much in effort and lives to transport across the Atlantic.
No sooner had the relocated team arrived when it became obvious that there were tanks in the town too. Machinegun and main tank gun fire was apparent from the direction of company headquarters so they picked up their half dozen LAW-80 weapons, and ran back the way they had come.
Coordination was absent at first, as were the platoon commanders and sergeants. However the army seeks to make everyone familiar with the process of leadership up to at least two command levels above their own.
Newly promoted to the rank of ‘Full Screw’, Corporal Baz Cotter of 3 Section, 15 Platoon, was blissfully unaware he was now the acting company commander of D Company, 1 Wessex. What Baz was aware of though was that the radios were not working due to jamming, Russian special forces had probably had a pop at taking the bridge and a ‘Monkey’, of all people, had handed them their arse. Now of course there was machine gun and tank fire with accompanying explosions from both the north and south.
A runner from 1 Section, along the canal tow path on the northern side of Autobahn 2, had arrived, his chinstrap for his helmet undone and hanging free. It was something many of the veterans of the Elbe were doing to distinguish themselves from the replacements from the UK. Baz was doing it too even though in hindsight it did seem a little childish. The runner informed him that there were enemy tanks on the airfield and the sapper’s section commander from 25 Regiment RE was preparing to blow the autobahn bridge. This titbit earned him a ‘it’s-news-to-me’ gesture to his questioning glance at the sappers sharing his GPMG gun pit. The two with him had wired up the pair of old narrow bridges that had once carried rail tracks, and 15 Platoon’s commander had the responsibility of ordering their destruction, but the decision to blow the autobahn bridge was solely for the OC of D Company to make.
“Has he got comms with Sunray 4?” Baz asked, using the OC’s generic callsign.
“Nope.”
“Well remind him of four things; that firstly it’s not his call to make, secondly that as 4 Corps needs to cross here he may be doing the Reds a favour, and both thirdly and fourthly it’s not his call to make, so hang fire on that!”
The runner started away but a thought occurred to Baz.
“Any infantry, or any sign of IFVs?”
“No Corp’, just three tanks.”
“How do they expect to take and hold a bridge with just tanks?”
They both ducked instinctively as a tank’s main gun fired somewhere away to the south.
“Maybe they don’t think they need infantry, given as they seem to suddenly have a shit-load of tanks right on our doorstep, Corporal?” The runner then departed at a sprint back along the tow path, one hand on top of his helmet, holding it in place.
He had a point, Baz thought.
“Corporal Cotter!” a voice hailed from up on the 391’s elevated section, and Baz saw the speaker was one of the section commanders from 14 Platoon.”
“What?” he shouted back.
“Company headquarters is on fire” the lance corporal shouted.
Well that about proves it, thought Baz, I'm dreaming that I am back at Brecon and if I just pinch myself this worst case scenario exercise will simply vanish.
“We can see the flames from here but we can’t see any of our lot making their way back from the O Group.”
That gave Baz sudden pause for thought. He had been expecting the boss and Terry, the platoon sergeant, to come haring back at any moment. What if the sergeants and platoon commanders were cut off with company headquarters somewhere? Should he send a patrol out to find them?
With that last thought he realised he was the company’s senior section commander and senior rank present so therefore should act like it, at least until they got back.
The sections were only six strong and two of those were on average just green and unbloodied replacements. On-the-job training was taking place with the four old sweats teaching the new guys the tricks of the trade. In many cases the result of this included a wish by those replacements that firstly, someone would whizz the odd angry shot in their general direction if it meant a cessation of reminders that they had not been ‘On the Elbe’, and secondly that another draft would hurry up and arrive so someone else would have to make the tea all the time.