‘Just so long as I get a crack at a T-80,’ said Inkester. ‘Just one T-80 in my sight, broadside on… I dream of them, Sarge. A whole long row of them silhouetted on a skyline, moving along like ducks in a shooting gallery. Pop… pop… pop… there they go. Magic!’
The radio crackled. Sergeant Davis adjusted his headset, pulling it down tighter over his beret. ‘All stations Charlie Bravo, this is Charlie Bravo Nine.’ The troop leader’s voice was penetrating. ‘Stand to, and prepare for action. Load Hesh, and keep to your own arcs. Out.’
Davis acknowledged, and then switched on the Chieftain’s Tannoy. ‘Okay, lads, stand to. Shadwell, load Hesh.’ He didn’t give them time to question him. ‘It sounds like we’ve got a war…’
Inkester’s voice was pitched high with surprise: ‘Christ!’
‘Now take it easy… all of you. Inkester, no itchy fingers, wait for your orders. If someone’s going to start something, it’s not going to be Bravo Two.’
‘Loaded,’ bellowed Shadwell, his voice cutting through the still air.
‘You daft pillock,’ complained Inkester, loudly. ‘You bloody near deafened me! We all watched you load a minute ago.’
‘Shut up,’ said Davis. ‘Keep your eyes open, and stay alert. Hewett, everything okay your end?’
DeeJay revved the engine slightly and checked his gauges. ‘It all looks good, Sarge.’
‘Keep it that way.’ Davis dimmed out the compartment lights and leant his head back against the rest. He reached out and touched the steel of the turret with his fingertips. It was cold, damp with the condensation of the crew’s breath. He could feel the throb of the engine. Bravo Two! She was a good tank, reliable, responsive to the treatment she received from her crew. He remembered being told how it had been when the cavalry regiments lost their horses before the start of World War Two — men had wept as their mounts had been led away to be replaced by armoured vehicles. If the situation were reversed, Davis thought, he would have identical feelings… you got to know a vehicle, trust it, understand its likes and dislikes. He had never owned a horse, but three-quarters of a million pounds worth of Chieflain took some beating. The womb-like darkness and security of Bravo Two’s fighting compartment was comforting.
THREE
Any doubts which were in the mind of Captain Mick Fellows of the Royal Tank Regiment concerned not the rapidly developing situation, but the sanity of being placed in his present position by a foreign commanding officer. He felt sure the scheme in which he and his small unit of Rarden-armed Scimitars were involved, on detachment to the Armoured Infantry Division of the 1st German Corps, must have been devised by a lunatic with no concern whatsoever for the lives of his men.
Officially, Captain Fellows’ troop was known as a ‘stay-behind-unit’. There were others, mostly infantry. Their job was to remain in concealment until the first echelons of an enemy attack had passed, and then to harrass and disrupt the logistics columns or communications wherever possible. That was fair enough, sensible tactics, but the German commander had, in Fellows’ opinion, allowed his enthusiasm for guerrilla warfare to obscure the impracticability of the plans he had developed for a unit whose normal duties were reconnaissance.
Mick Fellows was waiting with his Scimitar troop in a concrete bunker within a kilometer of the East German border, in dense pine woods between the villages of Bahrdorf and Rickensdorf to the south-east of Wolfsbug. His German commander’s belief was that any major Soviet assault in his sector would have as its centre-line the autobahn which ran from Helmstedt to Hannover, and he had deployed his troops for that eventuality.
The bunker was carefully concealed. The Scimitars it contained were not those Fellows’ troop normally used for training; these four had lain in readiness in the bunker since the slow build-up towards hostilities two and a half years previously. No tank or vehicle tracks, which might reveal their presence to enemy aircraft or surveillance satellites, led to their position.
The red glow of the lighting within the Scimitars’ bunkers removed all the opposing colour, blending the overalls of the men and the camouflaging of the tanks into the rose shadows. The air was warm, oil-scented. Earlier in the day the exhausts of the vehicles had been coupled to the ventilation system and each engine tested; now there was little to do but wait. At the far end of the bunker were a platoon of the 22nd SAS, their faces daubed with camouflage cream. They appeared casual, relaxed, some of them dozing or playing cards. There was no way in which Fellows could have identified their officer or the NCOs by their dress or weaponry.
His Scimitar commanders, all lieutenants, were studying the map on a low table near the bunker’s radio equipment. He joined them. He could sense the keen edge of nervous anticipation in the tense manner of their conversation; it was no different from the pre-patrol anxiety they had all experienced in Northern Ireland. Tonight none of them knew exactly what to expect. Even Fellows himself had no experience of battle, other than that simulated in exercises; but he knew that no matter how startling the explosions of dummy mines and shells close to the aluminium hull of the Scimitars, they would bear little resemblance to the real thing. Fellows had awakened from a nightmare when he had attempted to sleep earlier in the evening. In his dream his Scimitar had faced a ring of Soviet T-80s, a hundred of them encircling him, the muzzles of their 122mm guns following him as he sought desperately to escape. His own gunner was picking target after target with the Scimitar’s Rarden, firing the light 30mm cannon in short bursts. The shells were splattering ineffectively against the massive T-80 hulls, and Fellows’ driver seemed unable to manoeuvre to find the weaknesses on their sides. Helplessly, he watched as one moved towards him, as though to indicate it desired single combat; a Goliath against a David Fellows had experienced the terror of imaginary death, watching the dark muzzle of its gun selecting a target on the Scimitar’s vulnerable aluminium body. He had seen the belch of white fire… and awakened sweating. He understood the feelings of his men.
‘Winning the war?’ He tried to sound lighthearted and casual, but realized his attempt to reproduce the kind of conversational voice he might have used in the mess probably had the opposite effect. He had spoken to Sache- Worrel, a baby-faced twenty-one year old less than a year out of Sandhurst. Sache-Worrel was barely five feet eight in height, and looked as though he should still be at school. Fellows doubted if the second lieutenant needed to shave more than once a week.
He suspected the man was blushing. Sache-Worrel always blushed whether the words addressed to him were a compliment or a reprimand. ‘No, sir.’
A first lieutenant, a little older and much more confident, joined the conversation protectively. ‘We were discussing Hannover, sir. It’s bound to be a key Soviet Red.’
‘Probably. The areas of densest population always have it rough in wartime. They’ll come in for heavy bombing in the industrial regions. I don’t think I’d like to be a civilian in any of the German cities, and Hannover is a major link in the rail and road systems. But it’s not our problem…’ He jabbed a finger at the chart. ‘This is our patch; and now, this sector…’
‘His grandparents live in Hannover, sir,’ interrupted the first lieutenant.
‘I’d forgotten,’ admitted Fellows. That was careless, he thought. He should have remembered Sache-Worrel’s mother was German. His father had met her while serving in the British Army. He too had been a professional soldier; an officer in the infantry. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll hold them long before Hannover.’ He tried to sound convincing.
‘At the River Fuse,’ the first lieutenant spoke firmly, as if he felt it necessary to confirm Fellows’ words for his friend’s benefit.
Fellows didn’t bother to reply. He glanced at his watch, it was 03.40 hours exactly. It would be dawn in forty-five minutes. He wondered what was happening behind the frontier. Intelligence would have a pretty good idea back at headquarters, but Fellows’ squadron was committed to total radio silence.
FOUR
The most northerly-situated tank of the Fifth United States Force was commanded by Master Sergeant Will Browning. He was one of the few men in November Squadron with battle experience. He was one of the even fewer
