0802 hrs
My platoon seconds before the company moved out. Hunter's APC behind me.
"Walrus, this is Tapio. Move to front to my vehicle. Breach the minefield. Over!"... The flyby was a pair of ground attack planes that dropped scattered mines all over the area east of the airfield (Marked Area 1 in the google map). Good thing Charly saw them in time and didn't drive into them!
I did as ordered and passed Alfa platoon on the track. After Tapio's Leopard I saw the mines on the ground. I gave a quick order to the T-72 to breach a lane and I saw the tank commander close his hatch and traverse the turret to rear to avoid damage to the 125mm barrel. Plows down in they went and they pushed aside the mines, and four detonated without effect. The lane was quicly ready and my first section moved in and marked the lane for the vehicles to use. "Tapio this is Walrus, lane marked and ready!"
Just as I was ready I was given order to head south to ROAD 369 as the minefield extended there and Tapio10 tanks needed the route. I waved my arm to signal "column formation" and "march". And off we went.
Charly and the minefield, just east of the airfield.
The lane is ready. Hunter's APCs moving through. The lane was ready in few minutes, so my guys were very much "on the ball". Things were looking good at this point.
Heading to the next breach location I heard the news. "What the F***!" Three of our 9 Leopards had received mine damage and were effectively out of the fight. It made me mad... As the engineer officer I always said to the other guys that either make a lane or go round the minefield in following manner: go back 200, move left/right minimum of 500 and carefully move forwards to see if there are more mines. If there are, repeat. It turned out the guys were too eager and tried to bypass the minefields just around the edge. Two vehicles hit the mines this way and the third was using my northern lane, but wandered off the marked area and hit a mine on the side of the road. We were not in contact with the enemy yet and suffered 30% tank casualties. Murphy's law... Friction of war... Had to focus on task at hand, we had a mission to accomplish. This was part of the business, I knew it, but still it hit the morale quite effectively!
While breaching the southern lane I heard autocannon firing and Delta came in the radio. They had contact with 2 BMP-2s at the town of Anttila (Marked Area 2 in map) and were engaging them. There was also infantry. "Fire mission, over"... the FO came in and started to send the fire mission data to the mortars that were still at the airfield.
Delta's CV9030 taking a "shortcut" through a swamp. Lucky for Delta, the swamp was quite dry and didn't suck in the vehicles, but the traveling was slow none the less. The CV has superb cross terrain mobility and it can almost "float" on swamps... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAsR7m1wXM0
...see 03:30 onwards... but nothing is swamp proof.
Delta deploying in contact.
I drove back east as ordered and took positions behind Charly platoon at the Näkkimistö farm. Charly was in good positions behind the houses and I could see Alfa some 300m in front of us, with the Leopards looking for prey. Behind the woods I saw some puffs of smoke and heard the sounds of autocannons engaging targets. It was Delta. For now they had no tank support as the 2 Bravo callsigns assigned to Tapio10 were not in the area yet. The other Leopard struck a mine 1 click north of the fighting and the other was still on its way. Tapio10's plan was to move in tanks first, but that plan went in the trash bin after the mine incidents.
While the fighting was going on I listened to the Battlegroup's command network as well. According to reports there the rear guard was engaging some enemy tanks, but they were not pushing hard to north. Recce patrols reported enemy PCs and tanks moving west from the bridge, but the last report was the enemies are coming towards the recce patrol's positions and they had to take a hike. And then nothing was heard of them... To me it sounded like the S-2 was right about the enemy wanting to switch axis. They had had their share of casualties fighting against our forces, so maybe they saw the "opening" in our lines and wanted to move west. I thought to myself that it must be enemy recon element the Deltas were engaging. That too was an indication that the enemy is indeed coming our way.
The order came to Charly to take point and continue east along the main road (marked as "Anttilantie" in the google map)...
Alfa (in the background) and Charly with CO (foreground) at Näkkimistö farm, ready to move out.
