(Before continuing, please note that I have
included some units from Deezire's great mod. Thanks a lot for a superb mod,
Deezire!)
There was a soft freight-train roar...
The soldiers snapped their heads up and
promptly dove into their holes, huddling in them with their hands over their
necks. Mouths and eyes were left half-opened to reduce the chances of
concussion.
The 152mm shells slammed home into the
forest just behind them. Trees exploded in wood splinters and torn foilage.
Dirt rained down on the entrenched German soldiers, pattering off helmets and
kevlar vests. More shells came in, hammering the forest into a smoking, burning
ruin.
LT Brenner ducked like any other normal man
during the initial shell bursts. However, he now stuck his head up carefully to
observe the valley. The Russian shelling was innaccurate, now wasting their
shrapnel and blast in unoccupied forestland. Without forward observers
observing the fall of shot and correcting them, the shelling was just one meant
to demoralise inexperienced troops rather than cause heavy damage.
However, not all his men were lucky today.
Brenner could hear screaming from one of the foxholes to his left. The Russians
were using cheaper contact fuses for their howitzer shells rather than the more
expensive airburst ones, which could slaughter dug-in troops without overhead
protection with a hailstorm of lethal fragments.
A contact-fuzed 152mm had burst in the
trees above the hole. Brenner shuddered when the agonised screams of the man
slowly faded away. Beside the lieutenant, the platoon medic, Corporal Manheim,
cursed quietly. In the hellstorm of flying metal, running to the wounded man's
aid would only result in a dead medic.
Manheim knew that, but it did not diminish
his anger and shame at being unable to help the men depending on him for
medical aid. He lowered his head, hugging his medical bag.
The platoon radio crackled and the radioman
handed Brenner the handset.
"This is Yankee One-Five, calling Golf
Three-One. Do you read, over?" The voice had a hint of American accent in
it. Brenner strained to hear the words over the occasional thunder of landing
shells.
"This is Golf Three-One, I read you.
What's the situation?" Brenner replied as a shell landed with a
ear-splitting explosion fifty yards in front of his trench. The LT, medic, and
radioman ducked as warm pieces of dirt landed on them. A wave of smoke made
their eyes water and burned their throats from the near miss.
"So far, so good. The Russians are now
pursuing us. Pulling back to new position. Tell your boys not to shoot as we
come over, ok?"
"Roger that, out." The shellfire
was slackening. Brenner quickly passed the message down to his men. He called
Captain Horst to inform him about the new development. The senior officer
acknowledged him and prepared the remainder of his men, the 2nd and 3rd
platoons already mounted in their IFV's or Blackhawk assault transports.
The IFV's were American/German designed,
with a customisable turret that allowed different weapon fittings for different
missions. The universal mountings were normally armed with a high-velocity
'Dart' dual launcher, with the capability to hit both air and land targets.
They now employed double HK MG-34 machine guns for ground-use. British built
'Spitfire' light tanks gave the unit fast anti-tank striking power without
compromising tactical speed.
The American/German mixed tank unit in
front of them had been given instructions to attack quickly and flee in a good
imitation of disorderly retreat.
Soviet doctrine called for attacks across
the entire front until a weak point gave. Commanders would then divert their
forces and commit their reserves to pour through the gap.
The 2nd Royal Guard regiment to the left of
the German 33rd Mechanised Infantry Battalion, Brenner's parent unit, had been
hard-pressed by two days of unrelenting enemy attack. The top brass estimated
that the soviets would break through in 6 hours, overrunning the Guards and
racing through to capture a critical bridge over the Rhein, splitting the
Allied army in half.
The French 14th tank and 34th Mechanised
were being rushed to replace the mangled 2nd, which had suffered close to 40%
casualties in 48 hours of bitter fighting against the might of the Russian 4th
Tank Division, a formation nearly three times as large as the 2nd.
The tank unit, comprising of twenty-five
Abrams tanks from the 1st Armored Division and various other attachments from
German and American Mechanised units, had been ordered to hit the Russians fast
and pull back in disorder instead of a proper fighting retreat. The main aim
was to sucker the Russians in believing that the line had broken.
The Russian commander might decide to
attack immediately to exploit the 'breakthrough', or he might, given the soviet
love for central command, refer the matter to higher authorities. Both ways
would result in a diversion of forces that would ease the pressure on the
British, allowing the French to reach their positions in time.
The Americans came through the gentle
valley over the two hills that formed its sides. Through his binoculars,
Brenner could see that all the Abrams turrets were facing rearwards. Occasional
flashes and thunder indicated 120mm guns firing at advancing Russian tanks. The
Russian commander was a good one... He had decided to risk the wrath of his
superiors rather than wait for the opportunity to run away.
Brenner grinned. Too bad that the man had
just been suckered into making a predictable move.
Many of the tanks had been fitting with
smoke dischargers and either small cans of flammable liquid or tied down pieces
of wood. Such add-ons gave the enemy the impression of badly damaged tanks
fleeing the battlefield. Smoke and occasional small fires burned on the
speeding Abrams, giving a convincing display of cowardly Americans fleeing before
Soviet power.
Some of the damage was real, however.
Brenner spotted more than a few occurances of jammed turrets and shattered
armour. As he scanned his view across the retreating vehicles, one of the
Abrams blew up in a fiery series of explosions. Pieces of armour flying off
like paper, the American tank stopped and burned, ammunition popping off,
wreathing the dead tank in dust and smoke.
A tank shell fired by a 80-ton T-100, the
Russian heavy tank nicknamed the 'Rhino' for its powerful punch and tough hide,
had probably found the lighter Abrams. The Soviet machine mounted a powerful
135mm cannon and heavy armour in a mean machine the bigger than the size of a
London bus laid on its side.
Even more powerful was the T-500
'Apocalypse' ultra-heavy tank. Equipped with dual 145mm cannons and a twin
anti-air missile rack with SA-6 'Geckos', it was aptly named. It was the size
of a small house and mounted a massive amount of armour. The old T-72 tank had
been nicknamed 'Dolly Parton' after its busty front armour. If one could put
the T-72 and T-500 together and compare them, The T-72 would probably be
nicknamed 'Sandra Bullock' or 'Twiggy'.
The Russians appeared quickly, over a dozen
massive blocky shapes swarming over the hills. Behind the Rhinos, Brenner could
see the smaller BTR-60 Flak Trucks... each one a half-track armoured against
infantry small arms, mounting a 37mm gun capable of engaging both land and air
targets with a directional proximity-fuzed shrapnel round. More enemy
appeared... There was at least a reinforced tank regiment attacking.
The artillery shifted, the forward
observers in the Russian tanks now 'walking' the rounds onto the retreating
American and German vehicles on either side of the entrenched German infantry.
The tougher Abrams were hardly scratched... but several thin-skinned IFV were
torn full of holes, the men inside clawing their way out from the blazing hell
that had been a vehicle. They writhed like dying insects, screaming in their
agonised last moments as their clothing and armour caught fire, cooking them
alive.
LT Brenner looked over at his left, meeting
the eyes of his platoon sergeant, 2nd Sergeant Hermann. The older man gave him
a grim nod before scrambling out of the hole and joining the 3rd section on the
platoon's left. The LT hoped that the presence of the experienced sergeant
would steady the nerves of the 3rd, which had seen several men mangled by arty
fire.
The Russians closed, their merciless
threads grinding over and past battle-shattered Abrams and IFV's, each one with
a sorry collection of huddled shapes in the churned mud around it. Those used
to be brave young men... now they lay blown apart, half buried in the stinking
dirt. Not even dignity was granted them in death... several Russian tanks
grinded the dead allied troops under their threads, leaving a trail of stringy
human ordure behind the massive machines of death.
LT Brenner gave a last prayer, and gave a
loud yell.
"Fire!"
From the platoon came an outlashing of
heavy machinegun and rifle fire. Brenner knew that the bullets would simply
tickle the Rhinos. However, it forced commanders to button-up inside their turrets,
reducing their battle-awareness drastically. Bullets also shattered optical
equipment and snapped radio antennas, causing further disruption to the Russian
tanks.
Charging infantry dug-in among trees was a
nightmare for tanks. The bulky machines could annihilate mere infantry when it
came to a standup fight... However, in the forest, tanks were limited by their
bulk. Enemy infantry could simply hide while the massive machines lumbered past
before popping up again and chucking a satchel charge onto engine decks or into
the turret ring. Also, it was a fact, little known to civilians, that most
tanks were blind to what was within 5 meters of them. Russian tanks were also
limited by their sheer bulk of protective metal... the gun barrels could hardly
depress enough to hit infantry that were within 5 to 10 meters of the hull.
The lighter-armoured and speedier Allied
tanks fared better in such fighting... They were, however, a lot easier to
knock out.
What came next was predictable... Brenner
heard the distinctive note of incoming arty shells.
You needed arty to suppress, demoralise and
cause casualties among the entrenched infantry so that you could get your own
infantry up in their armoured vehicles to clear the enemy in close-range
combat.
The earth shook and debris flew as the
German troops hugged the bottom of their trenches. Now, the barrage was a lot
more effective, having been guided in by forward observers. Men screamed as hot
shrapnel tore into them. Others howled as the earth from shell bursts buried
them alive, leaving them to die suffocating under the muck.
Brenner told himself that the sacrifice had
to be made... The Russians were now going to move their Flak Trucks forward
under the cover of the barrage and disgorge their troops right on top of the
German position. The barrage, of course, would lift the moment that happened.
It would be too late for his stunned and demoralised men to be able to fight
off the Russians....
But it never had the chance to happen.
The woods to the sides of the entrenched
infantry were suddenly lit up by ten-meter long muzzle flashes... German
tank-destroyers mounting 155mm cannon with an 88mm fin-stablised sabot rounds
had just opened up.
There was immediate carnage among the
Russians, the high-velocity anti-tank rounds slamming into the oncoming Reds.
The shells caught the Soviets at their most vulnerable moment... with the Flak
Trucks and Rhino tanks intermingled as they changed formation to let the
infantry vehicles up.
In a blink of an eye, the ranks of the Russians
were choked with smashed vehicles careening out of control and blocking the way
of others.
A Flak Truck took a round that tore away
its right-side tracks. The armoured vehicle flipped over, causing a Rhino
behind it to swerve violently to avoid it. The Rhino collided with another
T-100, jamming the two together. The immobile tanks were torn apart by the next
salvo of German tank-killing rounds.... Along the entire Russian line, the
story was repeated many times in a few seconds. Dozens of tanks and trucks
piled into the logjam, colliding at high speed, their last orders being to
"pursue routed Allies at maximum speed"
It was carnage... but the main trap had not
been sprung. Further to the west, two radar jammers/fog inducers, otherwise
known as "Gap generators" deactivated themselves, revealing the
Allies most devastating conventional weapons.
The twelve French-made Grand Cannon spoke,
their thunder heard clearly even in noise and carnage of the front-line.
The Russian howitzer battery supporting the
attack was literally rubbed off the earth. One gun was lifted into the air by
one explosion and dumped onto another upside-down in a bizarre mech-mating.
Another had its entire crew blasted into red-tinged mist.... the recovery and
salvage team could not find anything left of them. A gun barrel was found half
a mile away rammed straight through a solid oak tree like an arrow.
The next salvo landed in the middle of the
stalled soviet attack.
It actually helped ease the congestion...
by explosively dismantling the Flak trucks and tossing the Rhinos out of the
way.
The Soviets broke and ran, individual tanks
and trucks trying to break away to Russian lines.
They were hunted down by the attacking
IFV's and Spitfires of Captain Horst's command, which had enveloped the jammed
Russians in the havoc. The damaged Rhinos, armour shattered and weakened by the
Grand Cannon shells, blew up when struck in the flanks by Spitfire 90mm shells.
The weaker-skinned Flak Trucks were riddled as well... spilling their cargo of
mangled human flesh onto the cratered and smoking ground to mix with the fallen
allied troops.
It took a while... but Brenner was finally
given the news in the battalion aid station as he provided support and
encouragement to the wounded.
An entire Russian reinforced tank regiment
had been wiped out, effectively tearing the guts out from the Russian army
threatening the British.
The French, for once, had not shown their
usual reluctance to attack. Together with the Americans, they had succeeded in
punching a hole in the Soviet line.
Deprived of the tank regiment that was
their mobile reserve, the Soviets had been flanked and enveloped.
The battle now hung in the balance, the
Allies struggling to hold the wounded Russian bear in a strangling hold.
It had been a great victory... but it
brought no more than a slight glimmer to Brenner's eyes.
For his platoon had been annihilated...
For only a fifth of his men would ever
fight again.
