The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

Sorry, missed this one out on my multi quote... but it deserves its own reply.
Thanks for the idea! You might not be very popular because I've just used the idea to nuke the carrier Enterprise and many people are fond of any vessel with such a name. I am kindly giving you FULL credit for that one!

Dan is a good guy. Always offers help with my stories. My blaming him is rather unfair.
I'd forgotten there is HMS Enterprise in service. Doesn't pack quite the same wallop as a carrier though.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Enterprise_(H88)



Very evil punishment! Blame your author.

When this arc ends, there will only be one sergeant remaining. The KGB/VDV sergeant will probably be repatriated.

But only after receiving and damn good shoeing from the soon to be ex-sergeant who'll probably get reduced for assaulting a prisoner.


Then get repromoted shortly after as the Army always has a shortage of good NCOs.

Exploited, then dead. Which in the case of the Para shouldn’t be long. The staff officer and the int corps officer will probably have an overall less pleasant experience before they are killed. They’ll be interrogated on basis of rank alone first, then for specialist knowledge. By this point that may be less about gaining tactical intelligence than it may be for the KGB survivors to identify any possible escape paths for themselves. But, it will most likely all end the same for the British negotiating team.

The British will know things went wrong when the spoiling attacks open. They will probably not find the remains of their team until after, but will know the team didn’t return and will put two and two together on timing. They will likely not really care about who perpetrated the crime, just that the crime happened. Accepting surrenders or ensuring proper treatment of enemy wounded is historically less rigorously enforced after an act of perfidy by the surrendering party (Japan in WW2). This is going to maketgefight for Norfolk that much nastier.

191 – Clearing western Norfolk


British forces were clearing western Norfolk.

C Company from the 2nd Battalion, the Yorkshire Volunteers had the title ‘The Leeds Rifles’ in their name. They were TA soldiers from that West Yorkshire city, serving some distance away from home and on a battlefield which no one had ever thought would be one. The Leeds Rifles were in King’s Lynn, on the western side of Norfolk. The 2nd Infantry Division’s 15th Infantry Brigade were moving north and east from the fishing town and deep into the countryside as they fought with retreating Soviet paratroopers. The part-time soldiers here were behind where the frontlines currently were. The task was to sweep the area to make sure that there were none of the enemy left behind who’d been cut off or intentionally left behind to harass the rear of the 15th Brigade. Away from the centre of the town and seaport on the River Ouse, The Leeds Rifles went up Wootton Road through the northeastern part of King’s Lynn. South Wootton and then North Wootton were small villages outside the town’s boundaries but this road was still in King’s Lynn. This was the suburbs and thus full of houses. Searching each house was out of the question. There weren’t enough men nor enough time to do something so manpower intensive and time-consuming. What the soldiers did was move through the smaller roads off the main road and went looking for trouble. They were out in the open, looking for signs of the enemy before the enemy took a shot at them. It was something, when explained like that, that didn’t make the soldiers happy. They didn’t want their first contact with the enemy to be one of their own shot at. Care was taken, a lot of it. Platoons and rifle sections moved about from cover to cover, watching over each other. Eyes were at windows and doors. Straight lines weren’t followed as they pushed through the area. No one marched down the middle of the road but instead the soldiers crossed through back gardens and small alleyways linking the roads. Fire support teams, men carrying man-portable heavy weapons, were close by and ready to move in. The Leeds Rifles were at this all morning and through much of the afternoon too. They saw no Soviet paratroopers, not any live ones anyway. A couple of their dead had been left behind though. The British soldiers had thought that the Soviet Airborne would have at least taken away their own dead to be buried. They hadn’t. Those killed by air attacks and when other 15th Brigade units had moved fast through here were forgotten by their comrades. The positions of bodies were marked and searches made in the immediate vicinity for weapons. In doing so, men with The Leeds Rifles saw that there were many houses, ones back from Wootton Road, which had been looted. It didn’t look to them like the Soviets had done much of that themselves. King’s Lynn had fallen several days after the Soviets had first landed in East Anglia and had been officially evacuated. Not everyone had left though. Some of those who had stayed behind had been in their neighbour’s homes looking for things to steal and causing damage while they did so. The soldiers who saw this had heard all of the propaganda that was about concerning national unity and all that: they saw here that things weren’t always as they were portrayed to be. A couple of civilians were found dead too. The ones shot looked like the work of the withdrawn paratroopers but there were those stabbed or bludgeoned to death. Who’d done that? Had there been collaboration here with other locals taking their revenge afterwards? It was possible. This was unsettling for the soldiers who’d come here expecting a fight but this was all rather odd. After being freed from occupation, unexpected scenes like these hadn’t been expected in King’s Lynn. Later ramifications might not be pretty.

A (Ayrshire Yeomanry) Squadron was part of the Queen’s Own Yeomanry, a TA unit also under 15th Brigade command. The Scottish cavalrymen had Fox armoured cars but also several Land Rovers requisitioned from civilian use. Those latter vehicles had been fitted with armour platting in a few places – someone had been watching the A Team, hadn’t they? – and put into military service. Two of the Land Rovers entered the grounds of the Sandringham Estate with TA soldiers dismounting from them carrying rifles. The men moved through the trees and took into view the country house which belonged to royalty. There was no sign of any of the Soviets. A radio call, brief and coded, was made to the squadron commander who moved up the first few of the wheeled Foxes. There was dead silence around with only the armoured car’s engines being heard. Was anyone about? Had Sandringham been abandoned and not destroyed in a petty act of fury by the enemy? That question was soon answered. Those men assigned as scouts missed the camouflaged and dug-in paratroopers. One Fox exploded when hit with an RPG round. Another took a wallop and was thrown backwards and onto its side when hit with a shell from a recoilless rifle. The scouts reported in the enemy positions where they believed the fire had come from though other Fox crews had already seen them. They returned fire with their cannons and started moving forwards, dodging expected follow-up fire. There was the use of that SPG-9 again, with a missed shot, but no more RPGs fired. The scouts saw men running, unburdened by rocket tubes. One of the Scotsmen shot off his rifle with care and knocked one of the runners down. He had another go at getting the second paratrooper, but that man was fast and lucky. As to the recoilless rifle position, it was taken under fire by several assailants and silenced. There was no more gunfire afterwards. Aircraft could be heard up above but high and friendly. The Ayrshire Yeomanry rearranged themselves, ready to fight again. The scouts looked for another ambush, sorrowful that they had missed the first. As to the big country house in the middle of the Sandringham Estate, everyone was waiting for demolition charges to start going off or maybe the first signs of fire. Two Foxes got in behind it and another civilian Land Rover in TA service joined them with men getting out and closing upon the rear of the extensive building. The Ayrshire Yeomanry had additional men with them, more than their peacetime establishment. There were unassigned British Army reservists and also retired TA men as well who’d volunteered to come with the squadron when it had mobilised in Southern Scotland. Those men would have later been called out for other units but where in Norfolk now with the 15th Brigade. Dismounted from their transport – one given a fine camouflage of green and brown by one of the part-time soldiers who worked in a motor garage in Kilmarnock wet-spraying vehicles –, the small party of armed men went into Sandringham House. Several winced at they crossed the threshold, waiting for an explosion. None came. No one blew the building up nor opened fire on them again after the initial ambush outside. The Ayrshire Yeomanry would report to brigade HQ that their special mission to secure this location was a success. They received congratulations but new orders too: push on because there was more to do.

B Company from the 1st Battalion, the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment was a regular British Army unit. These soldiers had fought at RAF Mildenhall down in Suffolk a few days ago, clearing out cut-off Soviets who’d made a last stand at that American-operated airbase. They and their parent battalion not been on the frontlines afterwards when the fighting had moved to the edge of the Thetford Forest yet they had witnessed it burn from a distance. Now, today, they were back on the frontlines. The forest, still burning, was behind them and so too was the village of Mundford where there had been that attempted big ambush this morning. B Company had fought along with other 1st Infantry Brigade units in opposing the rush of Soviet paratroopers forward and now was chasing them north. Swaffham and the crossroads around that larger village was further ahead. In the meantime, there were localities along the road to be fought over with Hilborough being one of them. That was only a few houses. Each of those buildings were no longer habitable. They and the farming fields around them, along with every patch of cover which could be used by the Soviets, was being blasted with artillery and there had been incoming air strikes too. B Company wasn’t directly involved yet. They were being held back along with a large body of troops, armoured vehicles and tanks too. Those soldiers with a view watched the Norfolk countryside being blown to bits by all of this. It wasn’t nice to witness. Who wanted to watch their nation being smashed apart like this? These men were from the South-West, far away from here, but it was still England. They waited upon orders to move forward. The commanding major had been told that there would still be enemy paratroopers dug-in who would survive the barrage thrown at them. The VDV no longer had any useable armour – the few tanks were gone; the many armoured vehicles left without fuel and bombed when attempts were made to use them as pillboxes with their cannons & machine guns – but their men were still here. Plenty of them would still be there after all of the explosions stopped. Battalion orders had the company positioned to move in the centre of the attack alongside Chieftains from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and Scorpions from the 13th/18th Royal Hussars. There were a lot of nerves. The men were silent in places, loud and boastful in others to hide fears. Junior officers, sergeants and NCOs were among them and all with their own thoughts on what was about to happen. B Company waited. They then waited some more. Finally, the crash of the guns stopped: the last air strikes had already taken place. British armour started moving. B Company got the same order: attack! Over the top they went, into the fight. The enemy met them with rifle fire, nothing heavier, and the first fatalities came. B Company started getting their own shots in before the isolated clashes became company-wide. A bloody, full-on fight now took place. B Company would win but only after a hard fight against fierce opposition.

TA riflemen with Y Company, 6th Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers entered the village of Narborough. The part-time soldiers from Newcastle were far out ahead, deep inside western Norfolk and a long way from their attacking start-lines from where they had begun their advance a good few hours before. On foot and crossing the countryside under an unbroken sky with the sun above them, the Fusiliers had followed the course of the stream grandly named as the River Nar. Y Company was tired after the several mile’s march yet they had enough energy, and more importantly motivation, for the fight which they found when they got here. It was an unexpected one. A gaggle of enemy paratroopers, drunk and disorderly, was found. They’d been inside a pub and came out shooting. They fired wide and carelessly wasted ammunition when encountering a Y Company platoon. Only one of the Fusiliers had been hit – caught with a belly shot which would cause a lot of pain but from which he would survive – before those drunkards ran. They scattered in every direction with some even dropping their rifles…but not their stolen bottles of booze. One man tripped, fell flat on his face and started crying when he realised he’d split all of that alcohol into the road. The Fusiliers shot most of the runners, even in the back, but did catch others to take them prisoner. Wet trouser fronts and stomach contents being expelled were the unfortunate outcomes of taking these men prisoner. A radio report to the company commander from the platoon leader said that he didn’t need assistance from the rest of Y Company (who were outside the village) and he was going into that pub. The lieutenant found more Soviets inside. There were three men: two passed out with a third sitting on the bar humming a tune known only to himself. The pub, the Royal Oak, had been trashed. Its bar area had been used as an open toilet too. On the walls, there was writing in coloured pen – all in Cyrillic script which the lieutenant couldn’t read – and also crude drawings of naked women and soldiers with them: to see it all in full glory, to get a better understanding, you needed to look at the ‘artwork’ sideways too. Those men inside were pulled out into the streets, the now-dribbling singer included but only after he’d given the Fusiliers quite the struggle when the British soldiers took away his drink. There were now five POWs in Y Company custody. They and the six dead men were all from the Soviet Airborne Troops. They were meant to be elite paratroopers: highly disciplined and fearsome fighters! Instead, the Fusiliers had found drunkards. One of those unconscious due to too much drink was discovered to be a sergeant. There was no officer nor any of the KGB here. The company commander came into the village to see this for himself. Everything he’d heard about the VDV was disproved in an instant. Let off the leash and with no one watching over them, these men had misbehaved and forgotten their duties. Of course, this was only one detachment. Still… it was quite something. Y Company had come here to get behind other enemy units which were expected to fight rather than drink themselves stupid. The major re-arranged his men after the prisoners were secured and that pub searched for any more of them. The nearby main road was now covered by his Fusiliers. The A47 ran down to Swaffham but also provided an access route towards RAF Marham. Y Company waited on the rest of their battalion to move up, along with brigade assets, to establish a stronger blocking position here in the Soviet’s rear. None of them, officers nor men, had any idea of the role that that pub and this village had played in events right up to the landing almost a week ago of Soviet soldiers here in Britain. It’s proud landlord’s fears about its fate had unfortunately come true.