The R4 spun through the air as the Ratel tumbled, slammed into the deck, and went off. A single, steel-jacketed round ricocheted from metal wall to metal wall, showering the interior with sparks, before burying itself deep in the assistant driver’s belly. The man screamed and collapsed in on himself, his hands clutching convulsively at the gaping wound.
Von Brandis fought a personal war with the edge of the map table, a fire extinguisher handle, and his radio cord. Finally freeing himself and standing up on the canted deck, he tossed a first aid kit to his driver and reached up to unlock one of the roof hatches.
He bent down and looked before crawling out, taking his own assault rifle with him.
Everyone was still under cover against random mortar volleys and suppressive fire from the advancing enemy tank company. He scanned the forward edge of the battalion’s gray, roiling smoke screen. Nothing in sight there. Right, the enemy armor should still be about a kilometer away.
The Namibian mortars had shifted targets within his battalion’s position and now seemed to be bombarding an empty piece of desert. Good. That was one advantage of a dispersed deployment. A fine haze of dust and smoke obscured anything
over five hundred meters away and made him cough. It was getting warmer, but the sun wouldn’t burn off this acrid mist.
The disadvantage of dispersion was the difficulty of getting from place to place, especially under fire. His executive officer’s command Ratel was more than a hundred and fifty meters away, behind a low rise near
A
Company’s laager and fighting positions.
He leaned down through the open hatch.
“I’m going to Major Hougaard’s vehicle! Frans, come with me. The rest of you stay put! “
As soon as the radio operator crawled out and climbed to his feet, the two men sprinted off, ducking more out of instinct than reasoned thought as shells burst to either side. Mortar fragments rip through the air faster than any human can hope to react.
It was only the barest taste of an infantryman’s world, but the colonel longed for the relative safety of his command vehicle. Running desperately across open, hard-pack cd sand under fire seemed a poor way to run a battle.
They reached the side of Hougaard’s Ratel and von Brandis banged on its armored side door with the hilt of his bayonet. It opened after a nerve-racking, five-second pause, and the two men piled inside the
Ratel’s already crowded interior.
Von Brandis squeezed through the crush toward a round faced bearded man with deceptively soft-looking features.
“Colonel, what on earth … !” Major Jamie Hougaard exclaimed, then cut off the rest of his sentence as superfluous. It was obvious that his commander’s vehicle had been hit. And the details would have to wait.
“What’s the situation?” Von Brandis didn’t have time to waste in idle chitchat. He’d lost a precious couple of minutes while transferring to this secondary command post.
Hougaard held his hand over one radio headphone, pressing it to his ear as he listened to a new report just coming in.
“The FJands are engaging that verdomde mortar battery now. And that should put a stop to this blery barrage. They’ve killed a lot of infantry, too.”
Von Brandis nodded. That was good news, but not his main concern. What about the enemy tanks? They’d reach the edge of his smoke soon. Luckily, the forward observer for his own mortar battery was located in Hougaard’s vehicle.
He turned to the young artillery officer and ordered, “Fire only enough smoke to maintain the screen. Mix HE in with the smoke rounds, fuzed for airburst.”
The lieutenant nodded his understanding eagerly. A few mortar rounds bursting in midair, showering the ground below with sharp-edged steel fragments, should strip the attacking infantry away from their tanks.
Hougaard handed him a headset. He shrugged out of his helmet and slid the set over his ears in time to hear Hougaard’s voice over the circuit.
“Delta One, repeat your last, over.”
The armored car squadron commander’s voice was exultant. Though he was momentarily drowned out by the sound of his own big gun firing, von
Brandis still understood his report.
“Roger, Foxtrot Hotel Two. We are in defilade, engaging the tanks from the rear at one thousand meters.
Three, no, five kills! Continuing to engage. Enemy attack breaking up.
“
His voice was masked again by a boom-clang as the Eland’s 90mm gun fired and the breech ejected a spent shell casing.
“Excuse me, Hotel, but we’re a little busy here. Out.”
Von Brandis and Hougaard grinned at each other. They were winning. No enemy force could take that kind of pounding from the rear for long.
Von Brandis turned to the young artillery officer again.
“Change that last order. Cease smoke, and start a walking barrage fifteen hundred meters out with airbursts. Let’s really break these bastards up!”
As the smoke cleared, von Brandis saw burning vehicles and bodies sprawled in a rough band a kilometer from his own line. There were still a few enemy tanks operational, but as they turned to engage the threat to their rear, the battalion’s jeep-mounted antitank missiles had easy shots and quickly finished off the survivors. Dirty-gray puffs of smoke appeared up and down the enemy line as his mortars worked the exposed
Namibian infantry over.
The enemy attack was routed. Soldiers fled in all directions, a few raised their hands in surrender, and many just stood in shock and stared at nothing.
Von Brandis smiled. He had his victory and a clear road to Windhoek “Colonel, message on the HF set. ” Each command vehicle had one high-frequency radio, and several ultrahigh-frequency sets. The UHF radios were used for short-range battlefield messages sent in the clear or using simple verbal codes. High-frequency radio was only used for long-range transmission, and messages were always encrypted.
Von Brandis picked up the handset.
“This is Foxtrot Hotel One, over.”
“One, this is Chessboard. Stand by for new orders.”
He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Chessboard was the call sign for
Gen. Adriaan de Wet, commander of the whole bloody South African Army.
Something big was in the wind.
Von Brandis recognized de Wet’s voice. Not even thirteen hundred kilometers’ worth of static-riddled distance could disguise those silky, urbane tones. It also couldn’t disguise the fact that the SADF’s commander was a very worried man. -Kolonel, our reconnaissance aircraft have spotted an enemy force approaching Swakopmund. They were only about a hundred kilometers northeast of the city at dawn this morning. Accordingly, I’m ordering you to turn your battalion around and intercept the enemy as soon as possible. “
What? Von Brandis didn’t immediately reply. He swayed on his feet, trying to make sense out of what he’d just heard.
Swakopmund was a small city just to the north of Walvis Bay-the 5th
Mechanized Infantry’s supply base. Every ounce of petrol, round of ammunition, and liter of water the battalion needed came through the port.
And now an enemy force threatened that? My God.
Von Brandis’s mouth and throat were suddenly bone-dry.
“What strength do we face, General?”
“Intelligence thinks they are Cubans, in battalion strength. “
Von Brandis was shocked. There would be no walkover this time.
De Wet continued, wheedling now.
“You have the strongest South African force in the area, Kolonel. More urgent logistic demands from the other columns have made it impossible to significantly reinforce Walvis Bay.