enough luxury, even though it was against regulations.
Davis had stayed closed-down once, for a full three day period; Bravo Two’s fighting compartment had become a cramped and stinking prison, and clambering out of the Chieftain at the end of the exercise into the fresh air had felt like rebirth. Some of the men in the regiment hadn’t been able to take it, the claustrophobic atmosphere and their own filth had become too unbearable. Those who failed the test had been transferred, some to the support vehicles. A few, disappointed, had applied for the civilian re-training schemes and left the army. Sergeant Davis had been pleased by the performance of the men of Bravo Troop. They had moaned, complained, bitched, but they had stuck it out; even better, he knew they would have gone on enduring the discomfort for another ten days if necessary.
Sergeant Davis had Charlie Bravo Two closed-down at the moment. It wasn’t necessary, but it was cutting out the chill breeze that was now rippling the trees and shaking the moisture to the ground beneath. There was little warmth inside the tank and he was glad he was wearing a sweater beneath his coveralls and NBC suit. The interior lighting was off and Inkester the gunner was dozing just below Davis’s knees, somehow wedged between the hard backrest of his seat and his equipment. Davis had his legs up across the breech of the gun. Deejay, the driver, was in his forward compartment and in his reclined position was also undoubtedly taking the opportunity to grab a few minutes’ rest. Eric Shadwell, the loader, was to Davis’s left, propped between the ammunition, the bag- charge bins and the breech mechanism.
Shadwell was awake and restless, his small padded seat in the fighting compartment supported him less than those of his fellow crew members. He stretched himself and pressed his hands into the small of his back. One of his legs had gone to sleep and was now tingling and sensitive as his movement restored the circulation. ‘Bloody hell,’ he swore softly. To occupy his mind he began mentally counting the ammunition; sleek evil-looking shells. Sixty-four of them in all, most situated in racks beside him. A few lay forward, stored to the left of DeeJay the driver, but they were difficult to reach if the tank was in motion.
Shells. Shadwell knew a lot about them. Bravo Two was carrying only two types at present: High Explosive Squash Head, abbreviated to ‘Hesh’, and Armourod-Piercing Discarding Sabot, officially ‘APDS’, but usually called ‘Sabots’. He closed his eyes and pictured them striking the armour of an enemy tank. ‘Bam… splat…’ That was Hesh, exploding, flattening, sending a shock wave through metal that tore off a massive scab on the other side, splintering and ricochetting around inside the enemy’s hull. ‘Bam… zonk…’ The Sabot, a tungsten steel bolt carried by a softer metal shoe which it left on impact, and then drove on through the armour as though it were nothing more than thin balsa wood. ‘Bam, splat… bam, zonk…’ He made the sounds again, and mimed the reloading of the gun.
The separate explosive charges which propelled the shells helped to make his life easier; no used shellcases came back into his compartment, everything was discharged forward. He could also select the appropriate power of charge, which assisted the shell’s trajectory.
The Russians didn’t use loaders in their tanks, he remembered. Sod that! The Russians had automatic- loading guns so they only had three men in a tank crew, but their system had a weakness. If the automatic-loading system failed, then their tanks became useless. NATO designers believed hand loading to be more reliable; Shadwell agreed with them. Besides, what the hell would he be doing if Chieftains only had three men to a crew? Bugger king a driver, or a gunner… and there would be fat chance of him making commander for a long while!
What else was there for him to count? Machine gun ammo? Six thousand rounds for the 7.62mm mounted above the cupola! Nice gun, you could aim and fire it from inside the tank. There used to be another… the point-five was used for ranging the main gun… obsolete now the Barr and Stroud laser range-finder was fitted. The range- finder was quicker to use, and more accurate.
He sighed.
It was surprising how big the interior could seem at times, like a bloody cathedral; especially when it was all in darkness. He could just see the dim outline of one of the crew’s Sterlings in its clips on the other side of the compartment. It seemed a hundred yards away… too far… the other end of a long tunnel. Even Sergeant Davis’s boots looked too small to be real, as though Shadwell was viewing them through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.
Maybe I’m asleep, thought Shadwell. It’s all a bloody dream this caper, I’ll wake up in the quarters. No such sodding luck… I’m awake! Maybe everybody’s dead? DeeJay’s dead… killed by a secret death-ray… dead in his driving seat… his head lolling and his tongue hanging out! Inky’s bought it, too… lying there with his eyes bulging in their sockets and his stomach swelling with gases. And Sergeant Davis… sitting there… just sitting… his hands on the cupola control, locked in a death-grip… clutching. Shadwell’s thoughts were making him nervous. It was like sitting up alone, late at night, watching a horror movie. Shadows normally unnoticed, suddenly became threatening.
He spoke loudly, his voice echoing slightly. ‘It’s the same as bloody Suffield.’ The remark was less of a genuine observation than a plea for someone to answer him. The fear was growing and he was feeling isolated, and lonely. Suffield was the site of the NATO tank ranges in Canada, where the regiment had spent some weeks earlier in the year. Neither the landscape nor the present circumstanced justified the remark. The only link was the time the men had spent on night manoeuvres, firing at targets through the infra-red sights… and it was dark outside Bravo Two now! Dawn was just a thin pale band above the eastern horizon.
Shadwell, as loader, saw very little of the external action when the tank was in battle. He had a periscope of his own, but there was seldom time to use it; often he saw nothing except his racks of shells, the charges and the breech of the gun. If he attempted to use his periscope, everything had already happened by the time he got his eyes re-focused to the longer distance or adjusted to the change of light. It didn’t worry him too much. Sometimes he managed to see where the shells he loaded struck their targets, but if not he still found satisfaction in imagining the scene through the voices of the men on the radio or the Tannoy.
No one answered him, so he said bleakly: ‘Well, not exactly like Suffield; at least we haven’t had all our bloody gear shot to hell by our own infantry.’ He was remembering an incident that had happened on their last visit to the Canadian ranges. On the night before a combined armour and infantry exercise there had been a bar-fight between men of the regiment and a number of the infantrymen. The next day when the tanks had been advancing across the ranges, accompanied by the infantry using live rounds in their rifles, the tanks themselves had become targets. All the personal gear carried by the crews in the storage boxes on the outside of the hulls had been shot full of holes.
There was still no reply. Desperately he changed the subject. ‘There was supposed to be an old Clint Eastwood shitkicker in the barrack’s cinema tonight. I was going with the corporal’s daughter.’
Shadwell was a few months short of his twenty-first birthday, lightly built and thin featured. His home was a small council house semi on a Manchester estate. The youngest of a large family living in crowded conditions, his first night in army quarters had been an almost agoraphobic experience. He was a man whose friendships gave him as much anxiety as pleasure. ‘Are you asleep, Sarge?’
Morgan Davis said, ‘Yes.’ He could almost hear Shadwell sigh with relief at the sound of a human voice. ‘What’s on your mind, son?’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ groaned Inkester, the gunner, from below Morgan Davis’s legs, ‘why don’t you take an overdose, Eric!’
Shadwell ignored him. ‘You think we’re going to have to fight, Sarge.’ It was a statement, not a question.
Morgan Davis decided to be honest. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘What’s it going to be like?’
‘Magic,’ interrupted Inkester. ‘We take a few of them out, then retire to a new position before their artillery can range in on us, then we brew up a few more. When the odds are reduced, we push them right back to the Urals. It’ll be magic.’
‘Be quiet and go back to sleep, Inkester.’ ordered Davis. He spoke towards Shadwell in the darkness. ‘No one knows what it’s going to be like. It’s a new kind of war. All
‘My dad was in the last war,’ said Shadwell, in an attempt to prolong the conversation. ‘RASC. He got one home leave from Egypt in three years. Three bloody years, Sarge.’ It seemed like a lifetime to the young loader.
‘This war won’t last more than a few days.’
