Firestorm: Red Thunder

As the advance elements of the 3rd Armored Division retired successfully from Braunschweig and made it to their next screening position in Hanover. And after the troops settled down and re-armed and re-fueled from the previous fight against the East German 9th Panzer Division. Around mid-night during our officers and NCO planning meetings we received a flash message from I Corps changing our mission status to no retreat, we where told that we needed to hold our positions for the next 24 to 36 hours while rest of I corps straightened itself out.

After we discussed the message one of my bright eyed captains, who is always giving us a history lesson. And sometimes at the wrong time, told us that this was not the first time that the Royal Fusiliers and other units in our force fought against the 9th German Panzer division. I asked him where and when? He promptly told us that in 1940 the 9th Panzer Division fought thru Holland and Belgium and ended up near the French and Belgium Border near the French Port of Dunkirk, until they where instructed to dis-engage from the battle. I told him we should all hope that the 9th Panzer is not that successful this time. I think our young Captain may have gotten the message, no more history lessons in staff meetings. After that I told the boys to go back to their troops make sure they get some rest and get them up early and feed cause tomorrow will be a long day vs our East German Friends.

I reviewed our deployment plan one more time and made sure we did not miss anything. We deployed our two Mech Platoons stretching from a town in the center of our deployment area to our right flank. A Reece platoon enabled us to push up our deployment area slightly to the North so we where able to hold the whole town. On our left flank we placed one of the Air-mobile platoons and extended them from the left side of the town and partially stretching to our left flank near a small hill. Our left flank was slightly open and we did not have contact to the adjacent units to our left. We placed the Infantry company's Milan Platoon to the rear of our right flank troops, We placed the Air Mobile Milan platoon in ambush and attached the two GPMG from the Airmobile HQ with them. And finally we deployed the Striker troop out of the Reece Company to the center rear. In reserve we had our Rapiers, Lynx Aero Platoon, two Reece Platoons, 1 Air Mobile platoon, the mtr Platoon and the Reece Support troop. During the evening our pioneers setup 4 mine fields while the boys rested.

Early in the AM, we started to hear a heavy rumble of tanks. Soon after we got the boys up a pair of East German Hinds popped up somehow to our rear luckily we had the tracks for our two mech platoons setup in the rear and the vehicles fired their AA machine guns at the Hinds and shot one of them down. One of our electronics intercept boys called me and said the East German commander is cussing us about the track driver rolling a six to kill the Hind. He said something about a bad omen.