Seaforth's Ladies Read online

  “Right; on three you’re going to wriggle sideways towards your left,” she said as she slapped William’s left hand to make sure he knew which way she was talking about.

  “Yes Sergeant!” replied Williams with greater confidence than before.

  “Okay. Three!” said Alex and she also started wiggling to her left. With several embarrassing grunts the two Johnnies succeeded in changing places with Williams on the bottom and Alex on the top.

  “Stay here until you hear the all clear call, we’re in for at least one more rocket attack before the Krauts hit us with their ground attack,” said Alex as she rolled out of the trench, reached back grabbed her German made assault rifle and ran towards her walker. Once she was by Winnie, the night started to get truly loud as the Corp’s 5.5-inch cannons started their counter battery work and their own division’s 25pdrs started to plaster potential concentration points for the German attack. By the time she had popped the hatch and got in the Winnie’s cramped crew compartment, the second volley of Moaning Minnies was incoming. She got the armoured hatch closed just as the first rockets hit.

  “Not as heavy as the first attack. Those thinking machines must have actually worked this time,” said Lance Corporal Chantal LeBlanc, as Alex strapped herself into her seat. Winnie’s driver’s Acadian English was hard to understand to those unfamiliar with it, fortunately Alex and Chantal had been working together for four months and Alex had developed the ear for it.

  “Yeah, well they can’t be wrong all the time,” replied Alex. She didn’t trust a lot of the ‘new science’ that had come out since ’44; except for Winnie of course, he was special.

  “We’ve got company HQ on the horn,” said Private Becky Popov, Winnie’s Radio operator/loader, as the rest of the crew ran through the pre-start checklist for starting up the Grizzly Walker. They might have been under artillery attack, but it wasn’t enough of an emergency not to keep to procedure.

  Alex plugged in her headset and was quickly linked into the Seaforth’s radio network, “Able Company this is Echo7Alpha we’re up and ready,” she said, her voice calm.

  “Echo7Alpha this is Able. Be ready for anything including vampires,” said company HQ.

  “Roger that Able. We’ll be ready,” replied Alex.

  Suddenly the Battalion CO himself was on the line, “All units! All units! This is Echo, attack incoming, repeat attack incoming. Light them up people and send the fuckers back to hell.”

  When the Canadians first started to receive the Grizzly Assault Walker, they did what they usually did with new kit: they tried to make it better. In the case of the Grizzly the improvements included the addition of smoke projectors. When the Germans started to regularly attack at night with creatures out of any sane person’s nightmares; the smoke projectors had been converted to flare launchers, firing red magnesium signal flares to help light up the night.

  At the call from Battalion HQ, Alex had toggled the switch which fired Winnie’s flares towards the front. Soon six brightly glowing red flares were illuminating a fifty yards swath of land, one hundred yards in front of Winnie’s position. Adding to this ribbon of light were flares from Able Compaines’s 2-inch mortars and the Seaforth’s 3-inch mortars.

  “Tanks! Moving front, repeat tanks,” said someone over the battalion`s network.

  Now that rockets had stopped, Alex risked popping the hatch to get a better look at what was happening. As she did so, Winnie lurched up onto his feet. He extended his arms and rotating his powered fists, he showed that he was fully ready for battle. Now they just needed targets.

  Alex didn’t have to wait long. Sure enough just as the first salvo of flares was halfway down to the ground, she saw several dozen large shapes loping towards the Seaforth’s position.

  “Gunner! Werewolves left ten degrees fire!” Alex shrieked over the headset. Even with the intercom Alex’s voice was normally hard to hear over the roar of Winnie’s engines. The only way Alex could reliably be heard was by loudly shrieking through the line, thus her nickname ‘Shrew’ by the other members of the Walker platoon when they thought she wasn’t within ear shot.

  Boom! Winnie’s 75mm cannon fired its ready round towards the attacking Germans. In less than a second, a barely audible whump resulted as the white phosphorous round sent out chunks of the burning element, scorching German storm wolves, starting fires, and wrecking the werewolf’s night sight. That the smoke combined with the flares to backlight the front line of the attack was just an added bonus.

  “Gunner, load WP, adjust another ten degrees left,” shouted Alex through the intercom’s microphone.

  “WP ten degrees left aye. Chantal! Rotate left,” replied Sarah May, Winnie’s gunner.

  Alex held on to the hatch cover as Winnie’s torso rotated left several degrees to help better align his cannon.

  “Ready!” shouted Sarah. Unlike Alex, Sarah’s voice punched through the walker’s interior without amplification.

  “Fire!” shouted Alex.

  Another White Phosphorus round hit the German attack line adding to the confusion.

  “Load HE, driver realign body to gun and prepare to advance on my order,” Alex shouted as she pulled the bolt back on the 50 calibre M2.

  “Loading HE aye!” shouted Becky as she rammed home another shell into the breach.

  “Realigning body to gun,” said Chantal as Alex felt Winnie lurch when his legs took two steps to realign its body to be in line with its cannon. He then squatted down lowering his profile but still ready for the attack.

  “Fire!” said Alex over the com.

  Once again Winnie’s cannon roared: its high explosive shell adding to the chaos in the German’s attacking force. As the Grizzly continued to fire its main gun, the platoon that the walker was assigned to also started to open up. Soon the ground between the two forces was alive with tracer fire as the five ‘man’ section of Alfreds opened with a mixture of Vickers and Browning heavy machine guns. Anything that made it out of the wall of lead and steel was immediately engaged by the two remaining sections of the platoon focus firing on the wolf-man super soldiers before they could get to friendly lines. The Canadians had long learned that German infantry would usually withdraw after they lost both their mad science weapons and whatever armoured units were assisting them in the attack. Therefore, Canadian rules of engagement prioritised the elimination of these components of the attack first.

  Yet despite the Canadians’ best efforts, several of the German genetically altered Schreckwulfen were managing to close on their defensive line. If the werewolves got into hand to hand combat none of the platoon, human or Automated Infantry would survive.

  But Winnie was there too. Knowing what her commander was going to order before she voiced the command; Chantal had the walker rise to its full height and start moving to intercept the werewolves.

  Whatever else the German scientists did to these men, they eliminated their sense of self-preservation, because three of the wolf-men attacked the Grizzly directly. Alex opened up on the lead wolf-man with the M2 Browning, expending half a belt of ammunition to literally shred the monster into blood chunks of flesh. Chantal shifted the arm controls and the large walker caught the second wolf-man in mid-leap as it tried to get at Alex. With a flick of her wrist on the controls, Winnie’s steel fist started to rotate at high speed then suddenly stopped, breaking the creature’s back. Winnie then slammed the dead body into the last Schreckwulfen sending up great gobs of earth and gore up into the air, crushing both creatures under the walker’s 20 tons.

  “Yeah! Show those bastards Chantal! Keep up the pressure. Bec: load AP we’re going cat hunting,” Alex shrieked into the intercom. With the werewolf attack stopped, for now, the young woman looked quickly from left to right trying to get a sense of the battle.

  It was the chaotic battlefield that the young sergeant had become depressingly familiar with. The initial flares had died out but the battalion’s 3-inch mortars were continuing to send more light onto the battl
efield. Their glare was reflected by the smoke and dust from the white phosphorous, and high explosive artillery rounds and the dozens of small fires that they had started. Tracer rounds from both sides stitched the night in patterns that Alex had always found strangely beautiful.

  “Echo this is Echo7Alpha wolves eliminated. Any more reports of tanks?” she said switching her headset to the company frequency.

  “German armour attacking Baker’s front. Permission given to all members of Echo7 for independent action,” was the reply.

  Alex switched back to Winnie’s intercom, and barked out her next orders, “Alright ladies we’ve been given permission for independent action. Driver run towards the flare line.”

  Without thinking, Alex braced herself and she felt the Walker run towards what had been the engagement point of the German attack. Once past the illumination of the flares and fires, Chantal hit the Walker’s headlights which though they provided very narrow illumination were enough to make sure that Winnie didn’t end up breaking a leg in a polder or deep shell hole as it moved quickly through the enemy line of advance. A minute after they had started their one walker counter attack, Alex called a halt and Chantal put Winnie into a stalking crouch and killed the lights.

  The feeling of being alone in an empty battlefield fell upon Alex as she scanned the night trying to get an idea of just where the German armour was attacking. Her search was suddenly made much easier by a bright explosion off to her left as what she assumed was a German tank suddenly brewed up.

  “Driver left 90 degrees. Use that burning Panther as a target and guide Winnie in. Loader get up here and help guide Chantal, we’ll keep the headlights off.

  As Winnie stood up and rotated the direction that Alex indicated, the hatch next to Alex opened and Becky’s head popped out of the Walker chassis. Becky, along with being the loader, had the best night sight of the crew. It was her job to help Chantal manoeuvre Winnie, keeping him out of obstacles that would break him or his crew. This allowed Alex to keep an eye open for ‘human’ threats.

  “Alright Chantal can you see that burning tank about five hundred yards to your front?”

  “Yes,” said the driver.

  “Good. It appears to be smooth sailing for now; open him up to halfway,” said Alex

  Once again, the large walker started to move forward through the night. Despite its size and the noise it made, the chaos of the battlefield offered the Grizzly enough cover that none of the Germans actually noticed them. Well that wasn’t exactly true; the mortar platoon that they stumbled into noticed them. However, they could do little as Winnie ran through their position stepping onto two of the hated weapons as he went. As they left, Alex fired off a clip from her StG44 into the survivors to help convince them to keep their heads down.

  Finally, Alex saw the German armour. Two of their remaining Panthers and what appeared to be an STG assault gun were crossing right in front of Winnie and his crew at less than fifty yards distance. Apparently, the Germans had satisfied their superiors’ orders for a spoiling/terror attack and were now retreating back to their lines. The two tanks had rotated their turrets to face back towards the Canadian lines and were busy firing their cannons and MGs in the hopes of keeping the Canadian’s heads down. Alongside the armour vehicles moved the remains of the infantry involved in the attack; despite their withdrawal the Germans’ steel discipline still held.

  As Becky dropped back down into her loader position, Alex got down to the business of destroying enemy property.

  “Gunner target far Panther,” shouted Alex into the intercom.

  “Far Panther targeted aye,” replied Sarah.

  “FIRE!” shrieked Alex.

  The sound of Winnie’s 75mm roared out through the night. Its armour piercing round took the far tank square on the side armour and into the crew compartment. The penetrator cut through the thin side armour of the Panther and ripped through the tank’s wet ammunition store, sending jagged metal flying around the tank killing most of the crew before they even knew that the walker was there.

  The shot however, did get all the other German’s attention. In seconds every German infantryman was pointing something at Winnie trying to let their armour know where the threat lay.

  “Driver, body check that closest Panther. Loader, load AP,” Alex shrieked again into the intercom.

  The sergeant then involuntarily ducked as a Panzerfaust rocket went wide of the now moving walker. She gambled the same way every walker and tank commander had gambled since the war had started back in 1939. Do you keep your head out and direct your machine or do you button up? This time Alex bet on keeping her head up and manning the Browning, sending short bursts of the machine gun’s heavy rounds towards a knot of German infantry.

  Then with a solid bang that shook the entire walker Chantal rammed Winnie’s right fist into and through the remaining Panther’s side armour in a perfect body check attack. The sound of the arm’s hydraulics banging under the strain of the attack was soon drowned out by the screaming sound of nearly a foot of two-inch-thick steel armour being ripped from its mounting and then bent back as Winnie exposed the Panther’s engine to the cold night.

  Knowing what was going to come next, the Panther’s crew leapt out of their doomed machine as Winnie backed off, allowing Alex to fire the remains of the Browning’s belt of ammunition into the engine compartment. Sending high velocity bullets smashing into the large but vulnerable engine block. Piston cylinders were smashed and multiple fluid lines were ripped apart. Soon the pride of the Third Reich was ablaze like so much scrap metal.

  “Driver pivot left bring that assault gun into line,” Alex ordered as she held onto the Browning for dear life. Moving backwards at full speed to avoid the ill effects of an exploding tank while rotating the torso was a challenge even for a driver as good as Chantal. To do so without throwing the rest of the crew around like Raggedy Anns was impossible. While Alex did manage to hold on this time, she was still slammed hard enough into her hatch’s side to see stars.

  “Shit!” she said she fought to keep her mind present on the fight.

  Seeing the 75 was roughly in line with the assault gun, Alex shouted

  “Fire.”

  Like any good gunner Sarah waited a second to get a clearer shot before she triggered Winnie’s cannon. The capped armoured piercing shot caught the assault gun’s front bogie wheel and ripped it off with ten feet of track.

  “Time to get out of here ladies,” hissed Alex still in pain from being slammed against the hatch.

  “Chantal; show our ass and don’t be shy. Becky; request Victor target on the green flare in front of Baker. Tell them it’s Jerry’s main line of retreat. Sarah get the cannon into the surrender position,” Alex said as she reached down to grab the flare gun and the correct coloured flare. Returning to the hatch she fired the flare back towards the burning wrecks of the German tanks.

  As they moved at speed back towards Baker Company’s position, Alex rammed a fresh clip into the StG44 in case they ran into opposition on their way back to Canadian lines. Trying to reload the Browning while Winnie was running was next to impossible.

  “Shit! Alex button up! Victor target request has been granted,” shrieked Becky in a mixture of surprise and fear.

  Without even thinking Alex slammed her hatch closed. She was stunned; she hadn’t expected her request to be accepted; hell three years ago, lone tankers, couldn’t have called in artillery requests. (Walkers didn’t even exist yet.) But the same thinking engines that powered the Alfreds now monitored, filtered and enhanced the Commonwealth’s radio web. One of those AIs must have agreed with her, because every gun and howitzer under 1st Canadian Corps control, over two hundred medium and heavy guns, were now zeroing in on the space that she and Winnie had left a minute before.

  As shells started to land behind them Alex issued her last order before no one would be able to hear anything. “Loader, try and get a hold of Baker Company and let them know that we’re coming in. Driv
er, surrender to our people.”

  Following through on her sergeant’s orders, Chantal turned on every light that Winnie had and moved both of his arms to the ‘hands up’ position. Since German walkers, so far, didn’t have arms this hopefully would be enough of a warning for the trigger-happy soldiers not to shoot at a friendly walker.

  Realizing that for at least for now, there wasn’t anything for her to do, Alex relaxed a bit and just let her crew do their jobs without interruption. It was then that the young sergeant had a horrible feeling come over her.

  “Oh shit!” she said, not realizing that the intercom mike was on.

  “What?” asked Sarah concerned.

  “I have to pee again,” Alex said with a note of frustration.

  Chapter Two: New Assignment

  “But we’ve just been cycled back, for some R&R; why does the Brigadier want to inspect us now?” whined Sarah May, as she injected a fresh load of grease into Winnie’s left knee joint. After coming off of the front line, it was 1st Canadian Army’s standard operating procedure to do a rapid cycle of maintenance and rearmament to its walkers. Having most of the walker platoon ready to react to a German ‘Terror’ raid had saved the Seaforths, and the other battalions of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division, on more than one occasion.

  “Because he’s the bloody Brigadier and he can inspect the platoon any damn time he chooses,” Sergeant Alex Mackenzie retorted as she helped their loader, Becky Popov, stow 75mm High Explosive shells in the Walker.

  “I just hope he doesn’t choose to inspect our personnel kits. I lost two pairs of silk panties when the divisional commander and his staff did their inspection,” said Chantal Blou.

  “That’s because of the accent. You’re exotic to everyone outside of New Brunswick,” replied Sarah; she’d finished greasing the left knee and then turned her attention to the right.

  “Either that or Chantal’s panties were the only ones big enough for the old man to wear,” added Becky knowing that she was out of Chantal’s reach.