Chieftains

Reading. God, twenty-four hours ago the lad was a breathing disaster area, and now he was cool enough to read a book while they waited for an enemy attack. He realized he knew nothing at all about Spink; not even his age…nothing about his background. Did he even have a christian name? Inkester and Hewett, he knew them; everything about them, faults, weaknesses, good points, what made them both tick. But Spink? 'Spink, how long have you been in the army?'

'Eight months, sir.' There was the sound of his book, some paperback, closing.

'Where are you from?' A few minutes ago he hadn't wanted to know the new men, and here he was questioning Spink. It was different though with your own loader, he told himself. If Spink was going to buy it, then the odds were that he would too. And it was necessary to work close to your crew, understand them.

'Winchester, sir. Hampshire.'

'I thought that was the home of the Green Jackets. Why didn't you join them?'

'Don't like walking, sir.' There was a touch of humour in the lad's voice.

'What were you doing before you signed on?'

'Insurance, sir; clerk. It was dead boring.'

Insurance clerk. 'O-levels, Spink?' You would need reasonable educational qualifications in an insurance company.

'Yes, sir, six.'

'Six O-levels and you want to be a loader.' Six O-levels were enough for a commission!

'No, sir. I want to be a troop leader.'

Saucy young bugger. Davis smiled to himself; Spink might do it. Perhaps quicker than he anticipated if the war lasted, and if he stayed alive.

Another dawn; the third of the war. There was the familiar smell of diesel fuel, oil, stale explosives and the crew, inside the Chieftain. They were sited facing south-east, fine rain making it difficult for Davis to see through the episcope as the breeze caught the mist and swirled it against the hull. It was barely wetting the surface of the ground yet; he wanted full torrential rain, the kind of downpour the dark night clouds had promised earlier.

The gusty breeze was moving the brown leaves of a tall beech to the Chieftain's left, billowing the soggy camouflage netting that broke the outline of the hull. To their rear a thousand meters away was the River Oker, running north-west towards the Hahnen Moor. They were hull-down behind the low railway embankment that led from Braunschweig to a nearby cement works; there would be no more trains for a long while, the track was destroyed in a hundred places, the lines twisted and curled, distorted, the embankment blasted flat. Davis's visibility was less than two thousand meters,

He had been eavesdropping on the different radio wavelengths, hoping to obtain some reasonable idea of what was happening along the front. Many of the conversations meant nothing, but he could follow the battles taking place somewhere in the mist and low cloud; seven kilometers ahead. The sounds were there when he opened the hatch, the noises of war dampened by the low cloud, but closer, woolly. The rain wouldn't slow them much…bloody Scotch mist! Still, with luck, it might cut down the air activity.

'Charlie Bravo Nine this is Zulu, over.'

'Charlie Bravo Nine, over.'

'Everything okay?'

'Yes, sir.' What was the new captain's name? DeYong! Probably Dutch; he had an accent that was difficult to identify.

Davis had sited the Chieftain carefully during the night; optimistically hoping for heavy rain. He could remember a time a few years ago on exercise when a troop of the regiment, sent to defend positions near a river, had remained stationary for almost. twenty hours in a downpour. When the time came to move, they couldn't. Every one had sunk in the soft earth and had to be towed out by recovery vehicles with kinetic ropes. You didn't make errors like that in this situation; not if you wanted to live.

Was the rain getting heavier? Rain. It would turn the broken ground, churned by the shell and rocket fire ahead of the advancing Russian armour, into a swamp. It would restrict air activity, and enable the NATO reinforcements more time to be brought up to the front. Every road in the abandoned territory which might have been useful to the Russians had been destroyed, but many behind the NATO lines were still in reasonable condition. Rain favoured the defenders.

Visibility? It seemed less. A thin line of poplars he had been able to see clearly only minutes ago, was hidden. Was it increasing mist, or was the drifting smog of the battlefield already closer?