Mechanised Company

includes one Command SLR Rifle team, two 2" Mortar teams, eight GPMG teams, six Carl Gustav teams, two SF GPMG teams, one Small three-hole base, two Small two-hole bases, sixteen Medium four-hole bases, three base-plug sprues & eight Unit Cards.

The infantry's job is to hold the ground that the tanks have seized. The men of the Irish Guards are no strangers to difficult missions, having faced the Germans in World War II and now the tide of Soviets 40 years later.

The Mechanised Company comprises a Company HQ and two Mechanised Platoons. Each platoon has an impressive variety of firepower at its disposal, with the ‘Gimpy’ (GPMG or General Purpose Machine-gun) and L1A1 SLRs (Self-Loading Rifles), the ‘Charlie G’ (84mm Carl Gustav recoilless gun) and one-shot 66mm light anti-tank weapons for anti-tank work, and a 2” light mortar team, whose main role is to use smoke to blind enemy machine-guns.

Second Lieutenant Peter Hawkes was near bricking himself in the dark crew compartment of his 432 as it rolled forward with an awful relentlessness. Fourteen months ago he’d been the scrawny fly half for the Rugby Second Fifteen at Ampleforth College, doing his damnedest to avoid getting caught up in the scrum. Now he was deliberately leading his platoon into the middle of a bloody nightmare.
When he’d signed up with the Irish Guards, it had been for three years guarding Buck House, the Tower and Windsor Castle. The worst, if luck was against him, would have been six months spent patrolling round Belfast or Londonderry. The very thought of debussing and storming an enemy position caused him to squeeze his hands tight around the fore grip of his SLR until his knuckles showed white.
‘Dismount! Dismount! Dismount!’
Peter emerged blinking like a barn owl as the sunlight all but blinded him. Only his drills kept him moving, peeling to the right and around to the front of the wagon where one and three sections were establishing the start line while two section hung back in reserve fifty meters to the rear. In front of him the smoke barrage from a battery of Abbots obscured the woodline that was his objective. Deciding he was as ready as he ever would be, he clicked the button on his radio. ‘All Two One call signs, this is Two One Alpha, advance.’ Then he commended his soul to God and stepped off.