Chieftains

He had laughed at the well-meant advice which was almost a cliche. 'Chance would be a fine thing.'

'That's exactly what I mean. Don't look for the opportunity. Heroes have a tendency not to survive.'

'It's not a war, Dad.'

'It's active service, and the nearest thing to a war you may ever have to fight. Don't be tempted to use your tour of duty to test your courage. That's not its purpose.'

'Things have changed in the army, Dad. It's a lot more organized than in your day; modern communications are very sophisticated…satellites, advanced radio techniques. We have computers…we just feed in the information, and the instruments come up with the answers. Our intelligence is first-class…radar…infra-red detectors…electronic sensors…we know every move an enemy can make. It's all very organized and technical. About the only decision I have to make, is when to clean my teeth.'

Everything had seemed so neat and orderly. Then. Clean smart uniforms, instructors who fed you their information lucidly and with assurance, orders given and immediately obeyed.

'This is a Scimitar.' The usual army practice of treating everyone in training, even young officers, as complete idiots. 'Welded aluminium construction. Fast, light and manoeuvrable. Pretty, gentlemen, very pretty. First-class reconnaissance vehicle. Crew three. Length 4.743 meters, width 2.184 meters, height 2.115 meters. Maximum road speed eighty-seven kilometers an hour. Range, six hundred and forty-four kilometers. It will climb a vertical object of half a meter, or a trench two meters wide. No nasty habits, well-bred, and a little on the fancy side. A nice smart charger for a Lancer gentleman. Treat her right, and she'll look after you. And what appears to be a punt-gun on her turret, is a Rarden cannon; ninety to a hundred rounds a minute. Single shots, or bursts of up to six rounds. Case ejected outside the vehicle, so they don't scrape the burnish off your toecaps. Interesting ammunition, the round doesn't arm until it is twenty meters from your barrel, and if it doesn't hit the target in eight seconds, blows itself to pieces. Very convenient…tidy. You are going to learn everything about it, gentlemen, and I am going to teach you.'

'This is your ammunition: TP; TP-T; MINE HEI-T; SAPHEI, APIC-T.'

'A Helmgard helmet, Mister Sache-Worrel. And what is it fitted with? Accoustic valves to protect your delicate eardrums! And what else? Right! Your communications facilities. And these are part of…? Yes, Clansman…your communications system. Eight hundred and forty channels available, gentlemen; HF and VHF; frequency coverage from one point five to seventy-five point nine seven five MHz, and two hundred and twenty-five to three hundred and ninety-nine point zero MHz.'

'This gentlemen, is the ZB 298 battlefield surveillance radar, which can be fitted to reconnaissance vehicles…the thermal imaging sight…lasar range-finder…the night vision gunner's sight…you need to know about mines, gentlemen; this is a film of the Ranger mine discharger system; the discharger holds one thousand two hundred and ninety-six mines in one load, and can fire out eighteen mines a second…bar mines are laid by ploughs; seven hundred an hour…note the angles of your smoke grenade dischargers; a full hundred and eighty degree smoke screen…gentlemen, this is not a cage for the display of baboons, though I sometimes wonder, this is the Morfax gunnery simulator…'

So much information, but still confusion…

Would his father have been confused, too, wondered Sache-Worrel? His own war had lasted less than twenty-four hours and he had no idea what was happening. His father's war had lasted five years. Could doubt and uncertainty last that long, or was it eventually overcome? And fear? War had not really begun for him yet…it was early days…hours…and yet he had already been terrified. He had seen death at a distance but not yet touched it. He realized how condescending he must have sounded to his father…wars were all the same. You might fight them with different weapons, in different places, but they were the same.

'Robin…'

'Yes, Ben.'

'I think we should try and make ourselves useful. Hinton's moving out now. We'll head back towards the west and have a go at the Ruskie engineering units; create a bit of mayhem with their soft-skinned transports. Strike, cut and run, keep on the move. Are you game?'

Sache-Worrel nodded. 'Yes, I'm game.' What was it Mister Hatton his schoolmaster used to say? Don't think you've lost, just because you're fifteen points down at half time; you can still win.

SEVENTEEN

It was different now, thought Morgan Davis; working better. The battle groups were holding the Russians! The minefields on the eastern bank of the River Schunter had been carefully laid with plenty of depth. The NATO gunners, covering it from well to the rear of the armour, had wiped out the first of the Soviet recce squadrons with a spectacular copy-book strike.