Chieftains

Eight, maybe eight, thought Davis. Better than the odds against them. If every NATO tank took out eight Russian tanks in the battles, then the Russian advance would soon be too costly for them to continue. Eight for one…no, God, not even eight for one. Better than that; he and the crew were still alive, still fighting. At least, three of them were. And the Chieftain was reparable. She was probably back in the workshops now, being serviced. She could be in action with another crew in twelve hours, perhaps less. Eight Russian tanks; three men to a vehicle. That was a lot of dead Russians. There were more – he remembered a BMP exploding, and that would have been carrying its full load of infantry besides the crew. Perhaps thirty men, all told. And this morning he had never killed anyone. How many things had he ever killed in his life, before today? Insects. Everyone killed insects…except perhaps Buddhists, and they probably killed some by accident. Davis could think of a dog he had killed once. An officer's dog. Ran straight under the track of the Chieftain as he drove it across the tank park at Bovvy. That wasn't intentional so it hardly counted. And there had been a squirrel under the tyre of his car, one early morning; Hedda had been upset, and one of the twins had cried. Apart from those, thought Davis, I haven't killed anything. Now, thirty men. Thirty, that was mass murder! Crippin, Jack-the-Ripper, Heath…none of them had killed that many. He would never tell Hedda about them, she wouldn't be able to understand. She knew you had to kill in wartime, she wasn't stupid, but she would blank out the fact that her husband was one of the men who had done it. Perhaps it wasn't a bad thing, because it would be terrible for a woman to have to hold someone in their arms if they knew he had killed so many men.

He wondered what Hedda would be doing. It was past the children's bedtime. It seemed years since he had spoken to her; he had wanted to telephone her when the regiment had received its orders, but there were long queues at the call boxes. She would have taken the boys to her sister's house at Ahlerstedt; it was well away from the city. They had discussed the possibility of war a few months previously, and he had tried to persuade her to agree to join the other British wives on evacuation flights to Britain if a war developed, but she had refused. She had become stubborn and rejected all his arguments. Ahlerstedt was wd to the west of Hamburg, and south of the Elbe estuary; it was bound to be safe there…there was nothing to bomb. Eventually he had agreed with her. But now, what if the Russian advance wasn't held? What then? What would happen to her and the children? Would they stay on her sister's smallholding, or join the thousands of refugees who would certainly move westwards just as those on the road had done this afternoon? It would be bad if that happened. What if he lost them? Families got split up in Europe in wartime, and sometimes never found each other again. They starved. Women sold themselves for food for the children. Momentarily the thought of Hedda being forced to make love to some Russian peasant soldier made Davis feel sick. She was too proud he told himself, it would never happen. Somehow, she would manage; she was a capable woman. Her family were all there, and they'd stick together. One thing about German wives, they made protective mothers.

A bright orange light illuminated the woods a kilometer beyond the river, there was the doppler effect of a full battery salvo of rockets passing overhead, then the rolling shock of the multiple explosions as they reached their target.

There was a shrill mewing sound beside Davis. He looked into the fighting compartment. The lights were dimmed but he could see the new loader, Spinks, huddled down between the gun and the charge bins, his arms wrapped tightly over his head, his knees drawn up to his chest.

'Spinks!'

'What's going on?' It was Inkester calling above the increasing volume of gunfire. 'Oh, shit! That's all we bloody need.'

'Spinks…' Davis struggled down beside the gun and grabbed the loader by the hood of his NBC suit, dragging him upright. The man kept his face hidden in his hands. 'Spinks, you've got a job to do, and by Christ, you're going to do it.' Davis shook him.

'We're going to die…' Spinks' voice was a wail. 'Oh God…'

Davis jerked Spinks' head back and slapped him hard across the face, then he pushed him back into the seat. Spinks was sobbing. 'You load every time that gun is empty,' Davis roared. 'You load, you understand you bastard…you load. Make one mistake and I'll kill you and throw your body outside.'

Spinks nodded, fearfully.

Davis climbed back up into the turret. He was shaking with rage. Cowardice was something he hadn't bargained for. Worse, he knew his threat to kill Spinks was real.

THIRTEEN