Davis tried to see through the lenses of the episcope, but some of the glass blocks were crazed, restricting his arc of visibility. He swore to himself. The lenses were a weakness which had been known for a number of years; somewhere a bloody desk-bound civil servant who was never going to have to rely on them for his life had probably jammed the funds needed to have the unit redesigned and replaced.
‘What’s going on, Sarge?’ Inkester was peering up at him, his eyes wide in the dim light.
‘Nothing. Keep your eyes front, lad,’ Davis answered bluntly. He refused to acknowledge the fear he had experienced at the thought of fighting partially blinded.
The explosions were now distant; the roar of shells and the howls of missiles had ceased. Davis unhitched his headphones and pulled on his respirator before cautiously opening his hatch. It was possible there was gas outside. He moved quickly, pushing himself from the cupola. The air was thick with smoke. He thought he could smell cordite and burning diesel, but knew it was only imagination; the mask filtered out all scent. He jumped hurriedly to the ground and found himself sliding down the side of a deep crater beneath the left track. He shouted with pain as something stabbed through his gloves into the palm of his hand. The shell crater was lined with red-hot pieces of sharp metal, and the ground was steaming around him. He scrambled out. A large calibre shell had exploded less than two meters from the side of the Chieftain, and the vehicle’s weight had caused the excavated ground to collapse. A little closer and they would have been irretrievably bogged-down… closer still, dead! Sergeant Davis’s mouth felt dry. In the lower section of woods he heard the unmistakable sound of Swingfire anti-tank missiles. Whatever their targets, they had to be within the Swingfire’s 4000 meter range… close. He could imagine the chunky missiles, shedding their casing as they left the launchers, wire-guided by their operators through separation sights towards enemy tanks or vehicles. It would be tanks… assault tanks first, then the armoured personnel carriers, the Soviet infantry combat vehicles.
He clambered back into the Chieftain. The smoke was already thinning above the scrub and visibility was now beyond a hundred meters and increasing rapidly. He hooked the earphones over his cowl. ‘DeeJay, back out slowly… carefully.’
‘Hullo Charlie Bravo Two, this is Nine. Hold your position, over.’ Lieutenant Sidworth was keeping a close ear to the conversations of his troop.
‘Charlie Bravo Nine, this is Bravo Two. Sorry the ground beneath us is unsafe. We have to move, out.’
‘Charlie Bravo Two, roger, out.’
Davis felt the Chieftain shudder as it settled more, drifting gently sideways as DeeJay gunned the engine. He called ‘Steady…’ through the HF, then switched on the Tannoy again. ‘DeeJay, you’ve a bloody great hole right under your left track. Take her back dead straight.’ The Chieftain shuddered as DeeJay rammed her into reverse, and then eased his boot down on the accelerator. It wasn’t easy to move a Chieftain smoothly, but DeeJay had always claimed he could make Bravo Two feel like a Mercedes 250 SL if he wanted. He eased the tank delicately backwards. The stern slipped again, rocked and dipped. DeeJay pushed his foot down hard and the engine surged responsively. The left track skidded, then gripped. With a heave Bravo Two straightened then leapt back three meters, levelling as it did so.
‘Steady,’ shouted Davis. DeeJay let the revs drop and reversed the Chieftain another five meters before manoeuvring it parallel to its former position. ‘Bring the bow up a fraction… more… okay, kill it. You satisfied, Inkester?’ he asked the gunner.
‘Yes, Sar’n.’
Eric Shadwell, the loader, called, ‘There’s something wrong with the Clansman, I’ve lost the troop net.’
‘Jesus, why now?’ swore Davis, then remembered he was still speaking through the Tannoy. He switched it off. ‘Then get it re-netted… and move, laddie.’ The last thing he wanted to happen now was to lose communication with the rest of the troop. Everything seemed to be happening too quickly, and he knew how dangerously mistakes could compound.
Shadwell was twisting at the controls of the radio set, then yelled: ‘It’s okay… I think it’s okay.’
Davis spoke into it: ‘Charlie Bravo Nine, this is Charlie Bravo Two, Manoeuvre completed successfully. Over.’ He ducked into the turret and slammed close the hatch.
Sidworth’s acknowledgement was laconic. ‘Roger Charlie Bravo Two…’ Then there was a break and Sidworth said, ‘Here we go, Bravo. Watch for the command tank… wait as long as you can… out.’
The last black fog columns of the HE explosions were drifting clear of the plain and joining td form a rising grey curtain when dark smoke grenades began bursting.
Davis saw the enemy armour. He had expected perhaps a single squadron, edging cautiously into the fields of the plain in the direction Sidworth had indicated. But far below him were row upon row of Soviet tanks, sixty or seventy, already crossing the misty corridor of ploughed ground that with its barbed wire had constituted the frontier. As his fear magnified them, for a moment they appeared as invincible monsters far greater in size, far more heavily armed than anything he had ever imagined. Where was the minefield? Could nothing stop them? What were the NATO gunners doing? Why weren’t they firing? A minefield was only any good when covered by artillery. Davis controlled his growing sense of panic. Fear could take away a man’s reason, make him commit fatal errors. He had a lot to live for… Hedda, the twins, …their future… his own. His hands were trembling, so he gripped the turret controls more tightly. Work to the book, he told himself. Take it easy and stay calm. Don’t forget the lessons, the hundreds of hours of practice. Trust Bravo Two, she’s a good tank. He took several deep slow breaths, then forced himself to concentrate on the terrifying landscape ahead.
The smoke screen was becoming denser but he could still see the advancing Russian tanks. They had already suffered heavy casualties. Several were burning in the ploughed strip of land that was freshly pitted with craters. In the woods beyond, more smoke, obviously from oil and fuel fires, was wreathing above the trees. He tried to identify the enemy vehicles. Some, at the head of the attack formation, were the new T-80s fitted with mine- clearing ploughs, but he recognized T-72s and the earlier T-62s It looked as if the Soviet division was using every available piece of armour it could find to add weight to their thrust.
Part of the battle group’s Swingfire battery was concealed in a shallow gulley skirting a thin plantation of larches. From his position well above them on the ridge of high ground, Davis could see their vehicles, and even a few of the men. They were less than three thousand meters from the first wave of Soviet tanks, and had either survived the storm of the barrage, or been moved quickly into position under cover of the smoke. He watched two of their missiles leave the launchers almost simultaneously. He was unable to follow their course, but one of the leading T-80s disappeared in an inverted cone of fire, and a second later there was explosion at ground level beside a T-72, which slewed sideways as it shed a track.
There were two Soviet Hind-F gunships swinging across the border woodland, and Davis heard himself shout an impossible warning to the crews of the Swingfires. The two aircraft came in at little more than a hundred feet, ominous dark vultures hovering above the ATGWs. One of the vehicle’s gunners must have seen them for there was a burst of fire from the GPMG on his cupola, and the helicopter on the right jinked, then steadied. There was flame beneath its stubby wings and momentarily Davis thought it had been hit, then the flame left the gunship as a pair of rockets traced downwards. They struck the slab side of one of the FV 438s simultaneously, bracketing the maintenance hatch. Davis saw the vehicle explode into fragments, its wreckage hurled high into the air by the force of the detonation. A second pair of ‘Spirals’ had left the other Hind, and one of the two remaining FV-438s received a direct hit to the rear of the cupola. The third, its tracks racing, was hurtling in reverse through the thin woods almost as though it were out of control, the pines flattening beneath it, smashing out of its path. It jerked to a stop, and as it did so one of its Swingfire missiles left the launcher, ricochetted from the ground a hundred meters along its path, and then exploded above the woods. Davis could feel the terror of the men within the vehicle. Its tracks churned again, failing initially to get traction, then it spun briefly as the driver desperately sought a route through the trees that would lead him to deeper cover. The first of the gunships hovered above and behind the vehicle, its pilot taking time to give ‘his gunner a clear shot. It seemed to Davis that the gunship was toying with the FV-438, a hawk suspended above its prey. He saw white trails from its missiles, then the smoke of their explosions hid the destruction of the remaining Swingfire vehicle. But the Hind-F had remained stationary too long and at too low an altitude. One of the battle group’s reconnaissance Scimitars on the lower slopes of the woods had watched the destruction of the FV-438s, its gunner following the movements of the second helicopter through the sights of the Scimitar’s Rarden 30mm cannon; the temptation when the gunship remained stationary at point-blank range, and within the elevation of his cannon, was irresistible. A four-round burst of armour piercing special explosive Hispano shells tore through the fusilage. Three failed to explode against the light materials of the aircraft’s body, but the fourth struck the port turboshaft, Mowing away the upper part of the engines and the complete rotor assembly.
