My first decent military exercise was with the Officer Training Corps in 1987. The OTC is a part of the Territorial Army in which students from universities and colleges from all over the country run around playing soldier. Great fun, lots of drinking and wenching as well as shooting guns and making things go boom.
Three hours I've been on stag in this fucking excuse for a trench. Handy to find someone else's old excavation, made digging this one out so much easier. I'm so bored I'm tempted to start smoking (note; 3 years on from this I did in similar circumstances) and my feet are in agony. The tab in to Imber was a fucking disaster. We were completely lost, rockapes were chasing us all over the Plain in Scorpions with deadly intent. We must have walked at least three times the distance we we meant to and then when we RV'd with the guns all the tow vehicles broke down and we ended up manpacking the howitzers the final mile or so. To crown it all I dropped a gun spade on my foot as we were putting the Pak Howitzer into action with just 3 of us (normally a six man job). A quarter ton of steel right into my toecap.
The medic checked it out and reckoned the bones were just bruised but he was totally shocked by my blisters. One on my little toe was bigger than my big toe and that wasn't the worst. He drained the all with needle & syringe and taped them all up not before taking photos to show to others.
So here we are. A 3 gun troop of 105mm Pak Howitzers to provide fire support to 2 platoons of infantry, an engineer trooop, a recce section and an HQ/signals troop. Holding Imber village against a force of one company of Royal Green Jackets and a troop of Royal Scots Dragoon Guards armed with Scorpions & Scimitars according to intel. An I'm in this hole in the ground at the very most rearward point of the deployment. Essentially the arse of the unit.
Movement catches my eye, over on the horizon. Approximately 1.5km away there is a break in the treeline on a ridge. That was a tank silhouette. No a CVR(T) though. That was a Chieftain. 55tons of Main Battle Tank with a big ass 120mm gun on the front. And that there was another one. I got on the radio to my IC and explain the situation. I checked out the tree line with my binoculars. That was another one. Crossing the gap randomly it seemed. By now the boss man was with me. He scoped another two. Might be worth discussing this with the big boss and getting some support back here.
About 10 minutes later I'm joined by two sections of infantry. They hastily find positions around the road into the village. I'm joined in my cubby hole by a GPMG team and a couple of grunts with a large number of 66s. Across the way I can see a pair of 84mm Carl Gustav rocket launchers being set up. Back at the gunline I can see Charlie Sub, my gun deploying for anti-tank fire. Nothing is coming in here.
Now I can here the tank tracks. It's an eerie sound, no matter how many times you see it on TV when you here them coming for you it's scary as fuck. That squealing metallic rattle as the tracks grind inexorably towards you. And then they stop. I swear they can only be 50 or 60 meters away but we can't see them. A runner comes up an speaks to the NCO in charge of the infantry. I overhear him telling them that their CO wants them to redeploy back at the other end of the village. And off they go. Just me and my rifle again. In this little trench. Well at least I've got a 105mm cannon just a few meters behind me and they'll have a HESH round up the spout.
Here they come. I see the tank barrel come around the hedge row. I make a contact report on the radio. "Hello Mike One Zero, this is Mike Three Three. Contact! Wait, over" Okay. I can see the Chieftain now. It's randomly firing from its coaxial gun. The commander has popped the hatch and is chucking smoke grenades and shooting his pistol. Laughing his ass off. I've got a good bead on him. No more than 25 meters.
I let go the entire clip. Blank rounds of course but if it was real the first two would have been enough. I drop down and reload and come up to start firing again. Shit. They've got infantry. Seem like hundred but probably no more than a platoon. Following the lead tank. I stay in cover and watch as they pass. Another tank and another platoon. What the hell. Let's take some out. I chuck a pair of thunderflashes into the second platoon. They don't reach. They don't even seem to draw attention to me so I let go with another magazine from my SLR....I reckon that would have dealt with at least seven or eight of them. Click. Ammo out. I see a Greenjacket look straight at me as he swings his jimpy round to me I drop just as it begins its chattering fire. Shitohshitohshit! My position was compromised. I change magazines and stay down waiting for the fight to come to me. It doesn't though. I pass the rest of my contact report, confirming 2 Chieftains and 2 platoons of infantry. Seems like there were problems all over the position. Charlie Sub had gone toe to toe with the lead Chieftain and scored a kill only for the second to drive right over the gun (it survived). Absolute chaos. The RSDG/RGJ force stormed straight through us without stopping. Another 4 tanks had hit our main defence line with infantry at the same time. Much stronger than we had anticipated. We clear the hell out of Imber withdrawing to prepared positions. There would be another skirmish and this time we would win.
Great fun. All just playing.
No comments:
Post a Comment