The first good luck then occurred a few miles east as an eight wheel BTR-60 festooned with antennae received a direct hit courtesy of the Italian recce troop calling in fire on IFVs beating a retreat from the battle at TP33. The vehicle, a dozen radios, a CD player and a compilation disc of American rap music were obliterated.
Thanks also to their recce troops the tank heavy attack to the south of TP33 and the hill fort was identified as the main threat and Lt Col Lorenzo Rapagnetta brought all but his own ‘borrowed’ machine around and into their rear undetected. Three BMPs and a BTR from the attackers to the north dashed in to collect their dismounted infantry and bug out. The Americans 11 tank collected a BMP just before it could disappear back into the forest and the Italian recce troop were the architects of the jamming vehicles demise along with a second BMP, with a little help from the gunners of the 155mm SP battery of course.
Baz was getting his head around the idea that his tactical thinking needed to expand to encompass nine infantry sections instead of just the one when he was hailed again by the same voice from the top of 391.
“Corporal Cotter!”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out” he yelled back.
“There’s good news and there’s bad news…the good news is that the radios are back up…the bad news is you’ve got three fuckoffbastardgreatbigtanks heading your way. Two on the tow path and one on this road!” he pointed at the street running parallel to 391.
The LAW 80 teams were all part of the various tiny platoon headquarters but the weapons themselves did not require a rocket scientist’s degree to operate it, but you had to remember that it had been designed by a left-handed rocket scientist. Operators had to work by touch as unlike the 84mm Carl Gustav it had replaced, LAW 80’s selector and safety catch were on the right side of the launch tube. Although larger than both the 66mm and 84mm weapons it had replaced, it still often required several hits to secure a kill on a modern main battle tank.
13 and 14 Platoon already had LAW 80s on the north of the junction so after switching his radio back on he summoned both 15 Platoon teams on the hurry-up. The other platoons now had the task of defending the tow path to the north from tanks.
He sent one pair over the narrow road bridges with instructions to head south and find a suitable spot to have a go at the towpath tanks thinner side armour. The other team he set on the corner by a small light industrial unit to cover the road.
He tried and failed to reach company headquarters or any of the platoon commanders and so informed the other section commanders that he was taking command and they were to remain covering their assigned arcs.
“Blakie!” he shouted to his 2 i/c. Private Steve McAlwy was a bus inspector in Poole, Dorset, which earned him the nickname, whether he liked it or not, of a TV sitcom character.
“You are now section commander of 3 Section.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Oh, okay.”
“But I’m stopping here for now.”
The two sappers were peering along the tow path into the pitch dark as the sound of tanks could now be heard approaching.
“We need to drop these little road bridges now, I reckon.” Baz informed them. “Before it gets dicey around here.”
“You mean it’s not dicey now?”
They had a quick conversation with their own section commander before giving Baz the nod to warn the rest of the company.
The first explosion was something of an anti-climax when it happened; the cordex they had used was designed to cut through steel. It looked just like his Mum’s washing line, a plastic covering protecting the powerful explosive within and Baz had watched with interest a few days before when they had wrapped it around the width of steel frame half way across, hanging under the bridge as they worked methodically. A dozen turns around each of the sixteen girders before the electrical firing cable had been laid.
“Is that it?” he had enquired at the time as they’d clambered back over the guardrail. “They had more in ‘The Bridge at Remagen’.”
“Well that was Hollywood wasn’t it” had been the reply. “And this ain’t the Bridge at Remagen, it’s just a half clapped out bit of ironmongery held up by paint and weight restrictions.”
Baz had looked doubtful.
“Seen any local civvies using it before they all buggered off?” the sapper had asked.
He thought about it and shook his head.
“Well there you go then.” The combat engineer had replied. “If we need to blow ‘em, the bridges own weight will do half the job.”
A flash, a very loud bang, and lots of black smoke now accompanied the firing of the charges on the first of the single carriageway bridges. With the steel frame cut only the tarmac road bed was holding it up, but it was still standing.
“Trust me” the sapper said defensively. “A fat housefräu and her shopping trolley strolling across will have that lot down in no time.” Obviously there was a dearth of Fräus, fat or otherwise.
The second bridge did indeed give up the ghost straight away. The integrity of the structure relied upon the spans and with them cut in the middle the two severed ends dropped into the canal with a great rendering of screeching, buckling metal on either bank.
The reverberations of the second demolition charge were followed by a gunshot along the canals far bank as the light anti-tank team opened fire with the LAW 80’s built-in spotter rifle. It only had a magazine of five 9mm tracer rounds but what they had learned on the Elbe at Magdeburg was that the chances of getting a penetrating hit on a Soviet tank clad in blocks of ERA, the explosive reactive armour, was to find a spot that had already been hit and its armour plate exposed.
ERA cannot be cleared away with small arms fire and even if a blocks metal guard is pierced it still will not blow. Even shrapnel hits from artillery near-misses will not trigger them. Occasionally some unwise soul will have a go, and usually die trying.
Everyone listened as the spotting rifle fired a second time and the 94mm rocket followed it a heartbeat later. It hit and detonated, but two tanks, not one, opened up on the firing point with their heavy coaxial machine guns and main guns. The tanks kept coming, the round had been ineffectual.
Baz was distracted by an exploding tank round just under the autobahn bridge at 1 Section’s positions and heavy calibre machine gun fire was chewing up the towpaths concrete surface, green tracer rounds ricocheting away wildly.
Both the 14 Platoon team on the 391 elevated sections and 15 Platoon’s other team opened fire on the single tank on the road. Neither team bothered with spotting rounds but given the furious preparation of a second LAW80 by his team on the corner they had failed to kill it.
He was staring at them as the gunner hoisted it onto his shoulder, took aim again, and vanished in a welter of smoke and flying, shattered brickwork.
The tank round had collapsed that corner of the building and only two unmoving bodies could be seen protruding from the rubble.
Shouts from beyond the autobahn bridge and the roar of a tank engine from that direction told Baz that 1 Section was being overrun. For whatever reason, 13 and 14 Platoon’s anti- tankers had not been able to engage to the north. He berated himself for pulling the team from 1 Section and they were dead now too, the only anti-tank weapons 15 Platoon had were lying beside the wall just beyond the dead team. The unseen tanks main gun fired again, striking the elevated section from where that anti-tank round had been fired from.