The Third World War: The Untold Story

Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov smiled cheerlessly. He was going into battle for the first time. Perhaps it was for the last time. He’d had a double ration of vodka that morning, thinking it would make things easier, but it hadn’t. There was this voice in his head — “What’s it all for, why am I here, why is anyone here?” His BMP was for the moment stationary. Its soldier driver, Boris Ivanienko, was watching his officer, whom he loved, with care.

“There they are!” The word went round among anxious men at the sharp end in 13 Guards Division. “Here’s that other lot — and high time too!”

The two incoming light motor rifle regiments of the fresh division deployed swiftly into action. Two tank battalions led, with six motor rifle battalions behind them. Barely a kilometre ahead, enemy tanks could be seen in action. Breaking down the bushes, filling the air with the stench of exhaust fumes, eighty tanks and 200 other armoured vehicles thundered creaking and clanking through the smoke in horrifying menace over the last few hundred metres. Multi-barrelled rockets from the Soviet side brought down enormous concentrations of fire to cover the moment when the infantry left their vehicles. The positions of the British enemy were still obscured by the continuous smoke of exploding shells, rockets and mortar bombs, as the BTR slackened speed and the troops spilled out of them. The grey-green mass of grimly silent infantry spread across the ground and, forming some sort of lines, followed closely behind the tanks.

Suddenly the artillery fire ceased and the air was filled with a savage, if somewhat forced, “Hu-r-r-r-ah”. Even the terrifying whiplash of automatic rifle fire could not drown that blood-chilling howl. As if reluctant to give voice again, the artillery was silent a moment and then lifted to more distant targets.

The two light motor rifle regiments, now for the most part attacking on foot, had the job of searching out the enemy’s weak places. The whole of his anti-tank front could not, for sure, be uniformly strong. The moment a weak point was discovered the division’s tank regiment and its heavy motor rifle regiment would be deployed there. These two regiments were even now lumbering slowly towards the forward areas, where it would soon be their turn.

Now, as the artillery and air preparation seemed to have passed its climax, and dismounted infantry from the two light motor rifle regiments were probing in on foot, all saw the signal of three green rockets for the general attack. The divisional tank regiment and its heavy motor rifle regiment slowly moved ahead. Clumps of mud flew up from the caterpillar tracks, accelerating motors roared. Gunfire broke out again — it was the tank regiment, now deployed into battle order, engaging the British battle groups. Spread out behind the tank regiment came the heavy motor rifle regiment. First the tank battalion of the regiment, then the first of its three motor rifle battalions. The second came up on the left, the third on the right. Each battalion was formed into identical columns of companies: the first company moved straight ahead; the second, at great speed, off to the left; the third to the right. The rumble and clash of iron filled the smoke-laden air. The armoured fighting vehicles spread out from their columns into battle formation as the tank guns hammered out their deafening drumbeat. This dreadful clanging noise, this terror and confusion, this necessity to do what you had to do when everything happening around was driving you away from it, was a battle.

Nekrassov scanned around him from the command BMP through his periscope, swinging it from side to side. Smoke drifted everywhere. Explosions ploughed up the open ground close by. Red flames leaped and licked over the armour of a T-72 tank not twenty metres distant. Beyond was another with its tracks broken, perhaps by one of the anti-tank mines the enemy dropped by air. Where the hell were those Chieftains? The Soviet tanks and BMP filled the landscape like an avalanche. The enemy was somewhere at hand but not to be seen. The British tanks were there all right, firing not directly from the front but from the flank or from far back, in well-chosen positions behind low crests in undulating ground.