Cold Fire, Hot Steel ’85 ™ A Team Yankee Campaign by James Billingham
Events of 8 February, around Kirchheim.
About a thousand meters north east of Kirchheim, Red Army Captain Pavel Seversky cursed again at the absence of the Lieutenant of the Motor Rifle Company. “Where are those riflemen? We are jumping off without them!” The plan was for the infantry to find and pin down the enemy anti-tank missile gunners. But that was crap now. Fall back to plan B: Cavalry tactics – speed and blazing tank guns.
Under cover of darkness and predawn fog, the Red Army scout section had worked its way forward and guided his tanks close to the German town. The apparent quiet was just the deceptive lull before the storm. Stealth had set them forward. But now it would have to be thundering mounts and spitting steel as fast as possible. If the tanks could sprint across the open area, maybe they could close to the first line of buildings before the German anti-tank missiles got a lock on Pavel’s tanks.
“Floor it and follow me!” Seversky said into the headset mike, to his tank company leaders. “Don’t wait for targets to show themselves. Shoot at doors and windows, alleys and hedges.”
The armored beasts had sprinted only three hundred meters when a rocket barrage exploded around them and pinged off the tanks. Metal junk too big to be shrapnel landed around the tanks, like a freak hail storm. When the first explosion blew off a track and road-wheels, a platoon leader panicked into his head mike: “Mines! Halt! Halt!”
“Wrong command idiot!” yelled Seversky. “Mine plows forward. Everyone else, covering fire and line up behind the plow tanks”
On the northeast edge of Kirchheim, Bundeswehr Stabsgefreiter Gunther Thom was doing some cursing of his own. The vaporized Artillery Observer APC was testimony to dumb drivers getting their men killed, and screwing up a simple plan. His orders to his grenadier platoon were interrupted when he had to grab the radio and call in the artillery mine barrage himself. When it came, the mine coverage to his front missed half the enemy tanks. Those damn gunners were being stingy with the mines at the wrong time. So it took a second call and a delay of precious minutes to get the battery commander to order the second mine artillery bombardment. By the time that the Bundeswehr rockets finally dropped another batch of mines, his men had already suffered the concussions of the enemy’s 125mm high explosive tank rounds. But at least the second minefield slowed down another Soviet tank company that raced toward his flank.
Among the Soviet tanks, Pavel was angry, excited and frustrated. Angry that tank 32 with the 3rd company’s mine plow refused to budge. Excited when 1st company’s mine plow tank did go forward, after lowering its plow. Then frustrated when a West German Milan missile struck that tank and stopped it before it had completed its task.
The tanks that had not been under the rocket barrage moved forward again before another barrage found them.
“Ambush! Jaguars on the hill, south of the town! Smoke, jink and shoot!” Seversky lost one tank destroyed in a fireball and one tank where the crew had been stunned but responded to his radio call. They might get back into the fight. A few other tanks that had previously halted, finally decided that moving forward was betting than sitting still. Now he had some good luck. At least some training was being followed today. His tanks had set two German Jaguars to burning, and the remainder pulled back.
Milan missiles were still reaching out from the town. And they were having an effect on his unit’s numbers.“Close on the missile positions. HE going in. Close! Close!”
“Scouts sighted German tanks to our rear” came the radio report. Pavel thought: “Where was my flank security? Probably dead”, he concluded. “Or they will be soon if they disobeyed my orders” he felt like saying out loud. CPT Seversky growled into the radio mike “Give me details! Identify! Vector and distance.” “Leo one’s, comrade captain. Bearing 170, 600 meters south of hill 641”. OK, not great but not the sprinters. Seversky had bit of time before those older diesel German tanks could come around the hill and get a bead on his remaining T-72’s. By then he should be well into the town. If he could chase off the German infantry, dealing with the Leo’s would be like a cowboy gunfight in a capitalist western town. The buildings would give him cover. And then it would be the Germans out in the open.
Inside of Kirchheim, it was decision time for Stabsgefreiter Thom. The grenadiers had done what they could to defend the town without tank support. They were running out of missiles. No friendly tanks in sight, and the radio was shot to pieces. The plan was for the German tanks to ambush the Soviet armor, hitting the Russians in the flank or rear. Then link up with the infantry in the town for a counterattack. That plan might still be working, but he had no way of knowing.
Without the radio, his information was only from sight, sound and instinct. He could not see the friendly Leo’s, at least not yet. With the constant explosion of Russian tank rounds around them, he could not hear anything outside the battle in the town. His instinct was that “his tanks” were doing their job, but if they were, they were still too far away to help him in the few minutes he had to withdraw or die in place.
His orders from above were to delay the enemy, hit him hard, then fall back. Thom could ambush at close range – if he was facing light armor. Which he wasn’t. The tanks side armor was still too thick for his Panzerfaust 44’s. Thom’s small platoon had withstood one assault from the armored monsters. But the grenadiers’ odds on a second round were not good. So it is time to fall back, through the maze of building and gardens that would screen the withdrawal of his grenadiers. He hoped every squad and section got the word. Thom would not get a headcount until they got to their fallback positions.
Seversky: …And now plan B was working. The German infantry were leaving or dead. “Forward, deeper into the town, then face about!”
But before the tanks could get their bearings in the smoky rubble, and find the space to turn, some ungainly towering insect armor was snaking through the narrow streets, practically materializing on their flanks and rear. Next, the tall bugs were lowering long antiaircraft guns. The Soviet tanks raced to get their guns to bear on the new enemy, but in a race of slewing guns around, these things were incredibly fast. It was a cowboy gunfight, alright. But these German quick-draw cowboys cut the tanks to pieces before the Soviets could get any shots off.
Thom turned around at the sound of new tracks and gunfire, to assess this new threat. But what he saw changed his grim scowl to a rare smile. The Gepard Flakpanzers were boldly closing in on the handful a Russian tanks that had been assaulting the grenadiers. The Gepards were shooting into the flanks and rear of the T-72s and ripping them all to bits. An image came to him like some Japanese Kaiju film: giant praying mantises slicing and dicing over-sized beetles. Best not to be in the midst of it. But being on the winning side of it was a good thing.
Gunther was beginning to think that he and his men just might hold onto Kirchheim a little bit longer…
Cold Fire, Hot Steel is a trademark of James Billingham for an original wargames campaign. All materials copyrighted 2018
Rose City Dukes and Duchesses 