The Black Effect (Cold War) Read online

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Published in 2013 by SilverWood Books

  SilverWood Books

  30 Queen Charlotte Street, Bristol, BS1 4HJ

  www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk

  Copyright © Harvey Black 2013

  The right of Harvey Black to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright holder.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-78132-122-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-78132-123-2 (ebook)

  Dedication

  Dedicated to Michael ‘Mick’ Comerford (1905 – 1961), a soldier who survived 3 years 8 months in Japanese PoW camps. And to all soldiers of the Commonwealth both past and present.

  Shimla Hills ©1934. Name: Michael ‘Mick’ Comerford (sitting).

  Map

  61st and 63rd Guards Tank Regiments Attack 7 July.

  Map

  Royal Hussars Tank Regiment Dispositions 7/8 July.

  Map

  Dispositions 14/20 Kings Hussars and Royal Green Jackets 7/8 July.

  Foreword

  Nightmare: a frightening or unpleasant dream

  By definition, a nightmare is an ethereal thing, something to wake up from with a certain amount of relief. The twentieth century turned nightmares into reality for many people across the globe and the Great War was considered a ‘war to end all wars’ – yet it was not an ending, just a beginning. In 1919, the thought of more serious conflicts would have been the stuff of bad dreams, but that perceived ending had fashioned a man capable of weaving nightmares beyond the subconscious of most. In a mere twenty years, Hitler took Europe to the doors of perdition, wiped out 6,000,000 Jews, and left his homeland, and his people, without hope.

  The clearing out of old colonialist empires left the field open to humanity’s first real superpowers, each immovable, each unstoppable. Stasis followed in the form of the Cold War. Though cold, it caused all world leaders to have hot nightmares with bellicose events, caused by mighty powers flexing muscles at imagined sleights and paranoid intelligence, increasing in number as the 1980s approached.

  I worked in the defence industry from the seventies into the new millennium so was closer to events transpiring then than most. The perception was that John F Kennedy had sent the Soviet Union packing in October 1962 and, no matter what, the balance of power had moved solidly to the United States of America. However, just below the surface, with finances at a critical level, the Soviets were ready to lash out – an old bear unwilling to relinquish territory and still strong enough to use its claws. Stasis remained, held by the energy of things nuclear. But...

  In West Germany, allied forces lived in capitalist comfort even though each man and woman knew what lay over the border, over Churchill’s Iron Curtain. With the will, with enough idealistic energy, could the Soviet steamroller save its gentle demise by use of a successful pre-emptive gamble? A strike of such velocity as to nullify the souls defending freedom? I did not know. Would we, who according to Oppenheimer had ‘become death, destroyer of worlds’, use the power of the atom to assert our right? I did not know. Somewhere in East Berlin at the time were soldiers who tried to know as much as possible. Little things. Pixels of information building pictures – some, indeed most, were hopeful. Some were dark – a frightening or unpleasant dream.

  Only a soldier knows how it feels when the armour of training is engulfed in fear. In the 1980s, only Army Intelligence lived with nightmares moving in front of them plucking hairs from the old bear’s back. Would the Soviets take the gamble? It was not unprecedented: the Normandy landings, Pearl Harbour, Stalingrad – all unlikely victories, all gambles, and all nightmares for many. They never attacked and the Wall came down; the ship of fools had finally run aground. But…

  Paul Comerford

  Chapter 1

  0630 5 JULY 1984. COMBAT TEAMS ALPHA AND BRAVO/ROYAL GREEN JACKETS BATTLEGROUP. AREA OF SUPPLINGEN AND SUPPLINGENBURG, WEST GERMANY.

  THE RED EFFECT +1.5 HOURS.

  A puff of smoke left the end of the barrel of the Chieftain’s 120mm main gun as the armour-piercing discarding sabot round shot from the muzzle. The sabot petals, having served their purpose, separated from the projectile and the deadly penetrator sped at over a thousand metres per second towards its target. Immediately after firing its main gun, the Chieftain tank fired off its two banks of six electrically-actuated smoke grenade dischargers erupting into a cloud of dense smoke out to the front as the driver gunned the engine reversing the fifty-two-ton giant back, deeper into the tree line. The tank and crew would move to another position in a last-ditch effort to cover the rest of Combat Team Bravo, harassed by Mi-24 Hind-D attack helicopters, who were in the process of withdrawing from Supplingen, their work here done.

  Combat Team Alpha, opposite, in the village of Supplingenburg had also pulled out. A few rounds of smoke from their mortar section gave them some cover and a pair of Harrier Jump Jets had made a brief appearance, one shot down, hit by a fusillade of anti-air fire from the four 23mm barrels of a ZSU 23/4, a missile from an SA-9 sealing the aircraft’s fate. Combat Team Alpha, badly mauled by the Soviet artillery and a heavy missile barrage that preceded the Soviet Army’s assault on the British covering force, were pulling back through the Dorm Forest. Some elements were forced to use the main route, at speed, to Konigslutter, where Combat Team Charlie from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Battlegroup would provide the next stopgap.

  0630 5 JULY 1984. 2ND BATTALION, 62 GUARDS TANK REGIMENT. AREA OF SUPPLINGENBURG, WEST GERMANY.

  THE RED EFFECT +1.5 HOURS.

  The T-80, pounding along the left-hand side of the battalion commander’s T-80K command tank, swerved left, initiating a zigzag movement to make itself a harder target for the enemy they were assaulting. Hit earlier by a High-Explosive-Squash-Head (HESH) round, that stripped the explosive reactive armour blocks from the front left of the turret, they had now become the target of the hardened penetrator that had just been fired by the Bravo Chieftain tank. The lightweight ballistic cap on the end of the penetrator was crushed and the steel sheath, surrounding the tungsten carbide penetrator which was twice as hard as steel, peeled away as the core pierced the T-80 main battle tank. Breaking up as it penetrated the armour at the base of the left-hand quarter of the turret, an elliptical spall blossomed out inside, the heated fragments ripping into the crew inside. The over-pressure burst their eardrums, and blood trickled from their ears and noses. Hot, smouldering slivers tore into the gunner’s right side, gouging into his flesh and peppering his skin with burning fragments, his hands clawing at his face in an effort to free himself from the agony, the smell of his burning flesh making him retch. The rest of the debris ricocheted around the fighting compartment, shredding the tank commander’s legs, his screams drowned out only by the louder screams of his gunner. The driver, relatively safe for a fraction of a second longer, continued to drive the tank forward before the ammunition ignited, erupting within the steel confines of the tank with nowhere to go, until it lifted the turret two metres into the air, molten metal and shrapnel killing the crew, before it fell back down, slewed to the left as the armoured giant, now crip
pled, ground to a halt. The rest of the tanks maintained their advance, pushing ahead, their masters urging them on.

  Lieutenant Colonel Trusov, Commander of the 2nd Battalion, 62nd Guards Tank Regiment, 10th Guards Tank Division, both heard and felt the destruction of the tank that had been running alongside his. Although recognising he had lost another of his battalion’s tanks, the battle was progressing well. All three of his company’s tanks were now racing in between the villages of Supplingenburg to the north and Supplingen to the south. His order from above was to pass between them, bypassing them. The enemy appeared to have withdrawn from the northern settlement and, although they were still receiving potshots from the south, the four Mi-24 Hind-D attack helicopters, from the division’s helicopter squadron, were causing havoc, keeping the British Chieftains on the move, making it difficult for them to zone in on the advancing Soviet armour.

  “Two-Zero, Two-Two. Minefield! Minefield!”

  “All Two-Zero call signs, stop, stop, stop. Two-Three take left flanking position, Two-One right.”

  “Two-Two, understood.”

  “Two-One, right flank. Flossgreben water feature, 100 ahead.”

  “Two-Three, covering left.”

  “Two-One, move up and cover mine clearing and crossing.”

  “Two-Zero, Two-One, acknowledged.”

  “All units, Two-Zero. Make smoke.”

  Kokorev, the driver, called out. “Us too, sir?”

  “No, just a platoon per company. That will be enough.”

  Three tanks per company moved into position and drove in a predetermined pattern, injecting diesel onto their exhaust manifold creating clouds of white smoke, engulfing the rest of the tanks in the unit in a fume-laden screen, but providing them with cover from any enemy tanks targeting them. The 62nd Regiment’s artillery unit had also been tasked with dropping smoke shells ahead of the advance, on the western side of the Flossgreben, a four-metre wide watercourse, one of many scattered around the area, to enable a safer crossing.

  Trusov took stock of the battle so far. He had lost six of his tanks, far less than he had expected. At least two could be recovered: one had hit a minefield and was repairable, and the second had just thrown a track. Four though, along with their crews, had been completely destroyed. He still had twenty-five tanks left. With the tank battalion behind ready to cross the Flossgreben, immediately after his battalion had crossed, both had been instructed to race for Konigsburg.

  The mine-clearing tanks advanced. The tank-mounted device, attached either side at the front, was lowered, the blades digging deep into the ground as the tanks powered forward, ploughing up and pushing the mines aside, outside the tank’s path. The mines, now upside down, would be relatively ineffective, the force of any blast going down rather than upwards. Two safe corridors cleared, the TMM Scissor-bridges moved forward to set up crossing points, to enable the advance to reconvene. Close by, Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty’s, (BMP-Mechanised Infantry Combat Vehicles) disgorged their crews, and the Soviet soldiers prepared their SA-14 Gremlins, shoulder-launched, ground-to-air missiles pointed forwards and up at the ready. The tracked, self-propelled-anti-aircraft-gun, the ZSU 23-4s, Shilkas, fanned out, their four 23mm barrels swivelling left and right, aimed up into the air. Each water-cooled auto-cannon, with a cyclic rate of up to 1,000 rounds per minute, guided by the onboard J-band radar, would provide a destructive barrier, out to two kilometres, against any aircraft daring enough to come in low to prevent the crossing. Further back, SA-9s, SA-6s and SA-4s waited, missiles loaded ready to shoot the enemy out of the sky.

  0630 5 JULY 1984. COMBAT TEAM BRAVO/ROYAL GREEN JACKETS BATTLEGROUP. AREA OF SUPPLINGEN, WEST GERMANY.

  THE RED EFFECT +1.5 HOURS.

  The Combat Team Bravo tank commander, Sergeant King, called to his driver to halt the tank as he peered through the vision blocks, rotating his cupola a few degrees, seeking out any enemy activity ahead of him. The length of the Flossgreben ahead was blanketed in smoke and, as there were no targets visible to him, his only task now was to report the fall of shot when the divisional artillery bracketed the area with high explosives in an attempt to disrupt, or prevent, the Soviet forces from crossing the water barrier. King tried to peer deep into the smoke, but could see nothing, although he could hear enemy tanks on the move across the other side.

  He reflected on one of the many intelligence briefings he had received as part of his military training. Under the heading of the capabilities of the Soviet army, he had been told that the Soviets didn’t even consider the River Weser as a barrier, such was their river-crossing capability. All he had to do now was report the fall of shot; then, along with the remaining tank in the troop, he could pull back. He would not be sorry. The Hind-Ds had been hunting them relentlessly; the Blowpipe shoulder-launched missiles despatching only one, they appeared invincible. The Combat Team and even Brigade seemed to be able to do very little about it. The precious Rapier missile batteries were being kept further to the rear to protect the main force digging in. Without warning, the smoke-filled area suddenly erupted into swirling eddies as the first 152mm ranging round from an M109 self-propelled gun struck. It was bang on.

  “Zero-Alpha, this is Alpha-Two-Zero. On target, fire for effect. Over.”

  “Alpha-Two-Zero, this is Zero-Alpha. Roger, on way. Job done. Get out now. Over.”

  “Alpha-Two-Zero moving out now. Out.”

  The rest of M109 battery, belonging to 40th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, launched their barrage in earnest, the large calibre shells peppering the river-crossing area with hot lethal fragments, killing one of the air-defence units on the ground, knocking out a Shilka and destroying two of the TMMs.

  0630 5 JULY 1984. COMBAT TEAM ALPHA/ROYAL GREEN JACKETS BATTLEGROUP.NORTH-WEST OF SUPPLINGENBURG, WEST GERMANY.

  THE RED EFFECT +1.5 HOURS.

  Looking back, the village of Supplingenburg was not only obscured by a shroud of smoke from a second Soviet artillery bombardment but also from the many burning buildings; pillars of black smoke dominating the skyline. Although the shelling had shattered the British forces using the village as a defensive position, the fug from it now provided them with cover as the Combat Team retreated.

  Lieutenant Dean Russell rocked from side to side as the FV432 armoured personnel carrier weaved around the ruts and dips of the narrow track that snaked through the Dorm Forest, taking them west, away from the devastation behind them. Beneath the black camouflage cream plastered to his features, now sweat-streaked and covered in a layer of dust, his face was pale as a ghost. Dug in on the eastern outskirts of the village of Supplingenburg, one of the many British units positioned along the frontline to blunt the initial attack by the Soviet forces, he and his men had been confident that they would give a good account of themselves. Now? He didn’t know what to think. He had been proud of the way his platoon had conducted themselves during the attack. But the thirty-minute Soviet artillery and missile bombardment had made it a one-sided battle. After a seemingly endless deluge of explosives smashed into Combat Team Alpha and Combat Team Bravo and the other units of the Royal Green Jackets Battlegroup, followed by an assault consisting of the latest Soviet T-80 tanks and more of the dreaded Hind-D attack helicopters, they experienced a short but decisive defeat, having no option but to withdraw. Yes, they had held up the enemy for short period of time, which was their aim. However, their first encounter had not been a good one, and he, like his men, felt adrift and dispirited. The engine of the 432 growled as the driver pushed the battle-taxi hard as they came out of a dip, the driver careering sideways as he barely missed a felled tree that partially blocked the track. Russell looked back, hanging onto the General-Purpose-Machine-Gun (GPMG) pintle; the next 432 in his platoon was following behind, the third further back again. The fourth had been abandoned back in the village, wrecked and on fire after being hit by a 122mm artillery shell. It wasn’t just the destroyed vehicles that h
ad been left back at the village. The wounded had been loaded onto any vehicle that could accommodate them, but the dead had been left behind. There just hadn’t been enough time if they were to keep ahead of the Soviet advance and escape being cut off from the rest of the army. That bothered the young lieutenant the most: having to leave some of his men behind, their dog tags and memories the only evidence he had of their existence. His commander of one-section, Corporal Wood, along with two other soldiers and the crews of the two Milan firing posts they were covering, had been lost. The rest of the company had also fared badly. His opposite number, and friend, in command of two-platoon, Lieutenant Ward, had been killed, along with men from his platoon, when his position had been struck by a Scud-B missile. He turned to face forwards again. A 432 from second-platoon was ahead of him, his driver sticking to it like glue, not wanting to be left behind. There was a sense of urgency, a need to get away, find some time and space to reflect on what they had just experienced, a time for the unit to reform. Or was it panic and the desire to escape and lick their wounds? He rose above it, believing that they had blunted the attack and were now withdrawing in good order to dig in further back, allowing other units to take their turn in despatching the advancing enemy forces.

  A sudden bright flash ahead blinded him temporarily, his driver pulling hard on the right steering lever as the 432 swung right into the loosely packed trees to avoid the erupting armoured personnel carrier ahead. The deafening sound, as round after round from the Hind-D’s 12.7mm four-barrelled Gatling gun punched into the stricken 432, now ablaze, pummelled the lieutenant’s eardrums. The sound was then joined by the roar of the helicopter’s turbine engines and the downblast from the rotor blades as it shot past, its wingman placing more rounds into the afflicted vehicle, the gunner tracing the track seeking out more targets.