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Excerptfrom OIL COMMISSIONby MacDonald ReidThe day
began with sun and artillery. Goryeven had never seen, heard or experienced
anything like it ever before. Shells rained down as though an unworldly
thunderstorm was pouring explosives upon his head. Every kilometer along the
long line extending to the southeast erupted in clouds of dust and dirt. Every
square meter was pockmarked with shrapnel. Every cubic centimeter of ground was
lifted, turned upside down and hurled angrily upon his troops. Then,
there was a lull. He expected to see the enemy surge forward towards him.
Instead, the birds of war gathered and the bombardment only heightened in its
intensity. Small planes darted in, releasing canisters that erupted in fire and
concussion. Larger planes flew the length of the lines, spitting out hundreds of
canisters, creating canyons of destruction. Slower moving, awesome creatures
blasted with cannons of such firepower that tanks were destroyed as easily as a
child could crush a plastic toy. Missiles
arose from his lines to meet them. A deadly game of tag ensued between the
onrushing war birds and the small arrows flung up at them. Many birds fell in a
fiery death, but most raced on, delivering their awful ordnance onto his
countrymen. They
departed. He raised his eyes to the horizon and the threatening berms. But, once
again, the enemy rained steel and explosives upon them. The cloudburst from hell
seemed to reach a crescendo and then doubled and trebled in its intensity. Great
dark shapes raced overhead far too high for the tiny missiles to reach them.
Smaller aircraft darted in. Many of the tormentors paid the awful price. Russian
fighters arrived, and the sky overhead became a chaos of twisting, turning,
climbing, diving and dying. The aerial and ground bombardment continued, until
he began to wonder how a human could keep his mind in this bedlam. The winged
bombardment subsided, and the familiar crack of high-velocity cannons roared
across the short distance between the lines. He peered out of his cupola as
gigantic main battle tanks crested the berm in the distance and rolled down the
near side towards him. Dozens and then hundreds followed it. Armored personnel
carriers and armored fighting vehicles raced after them. The
command "Open fire!" crackled in his headset. Artillery boomed and
shook the ground around him. His BTR rocked violently. Explosions large and
small ripped the enemy formations. Tanks exploded, APCs vaporized and AFVs
became shards of twisted metal careening through the air, ripping apart anything
they touched. A tank to his left fired, then the one to his right. Missiles
roared out from the lines, blanketing the foreground in white smoke that
lingered in the still, cool morning air. Tanks in
large numbers moved up from the rear to face their enemies in one-on-one
confrontations, confident that the walls of sand would afford them protection.
Cannons cracked, and even more of the enemy armor died in the no-man's land. Just as it
seemed that the stratagem might work, a pestilence arose from behind the enemy
barricades. Hundreds of helicopters swarmed forward under an aerial blanket of
fighters. Russian choppers and fighters arose to counter this new threat. Like
locusts in a wheat field, the Allied swarm swept away the pitiful few that were
thrown against them. Missiles arose from his lines to fend them off, but for
each one that reached out towards their enemy ten were returned. With uncanny
accuracy, enemy missiles sought out the battle tanks. Fifty-five tonne champions
of the battlefield became broken masses of twisted metal in seconds. Metal
monsters raced up the berms before him at tremendous speeds, flying into the air
to land with earth-shaking reverberations tens of meters behind the lines of his
infantry. Riflemen turned to combat the invulnerable behemoths to no avail.
Enemy dragoons battled their way to the crests of his defenses to fire down into
the trenches, catching the Russian infantry between themselves and the tanks
ravaging them from the rear. "Ninth
Cavalry, Attack!" He knew it
was a worthless gesture. His BDMs and BTRs were no match for main battle tanks,
but he couldn't sit idly by and watch the slaughter. His division's 73-mm
cannons opened fire at short range. His BTRs loosed their missiles, and his
dragoons opened up with everything they had. A breach in the onrushing wall
appeared. "Retreat
towards Ninth Cavalry," he ordered over the army command net. Men poured to
the rear. Vehicles raced away. "Fighting
withdrawal," he shouted. "Ninth Cavalry, drop back one-hundred, hold
and fire." Ninth Cavalry retreated with the speed of a whippet. "Turn
and fire!" A BDM spun
around, its treads spraying dirt in a great semi-circle. Its machine gun blazed
away, as its cannon searched for a target. The gun stopped, stabilized and
fired. The BDM's treads dug furiously against the yielding sands and slowly
accelerated, but not quickly enough. A German Tiger fired only once, and the BDM
erupted into a small volcano. A BTR fired a short-range anti-tank missile into
the Tiger's side, which suddenly became a larger version of the BDM it had so
recently destroyed. Machine gun bullets raked the BTR, but its eight wheels dug
into the sand, speeding it to safety. "Turn
and Fire!" he yelled again. One of his
BTR-6s raced down a small slope. Its four dragoons dismounted, then ran back
carrying two anti-tank rockets. A monster reared its head above them, exposing
its soft underbelly. Their rocket reached out, and the tank cooked off. A German
fighting vehicle raced by, firing with its 30-mm machine gun. Three of the four
dragoons were pulverized. The fourth sprinted back to the BTR, which raced away
firing its machine gun, as it ducked behind another small dune. The
morning became an uncontrolled and uncontrollable hysteria. Turn, fire, run.
Turn, fire, run. Each time fewer ran and fewer fired. Then, for no apparent
reason, the enemy was no longer at their heels. They ran and turned, but there
were no targets. Helicopters and Warthogs raged in the skies, but their numbers
were fewer, and missiles seemed to keep them at bay. A steep
hill arose before him. To the east and north, the hill became a ridge. Men and
machines struggled toward it, clambered up its shallow slope and dug in like
badgers. Artillery roared in their defense, and tanks dropped behind the
military crest with their snouts barely visible. Wearily, Ninth Cavalry dove
behind the line of troops. Then, it too turned, preparing to defend the higher
ground against the awesome wave of allied power.
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