by Walt Gragg
The Humvee eased to a stop beneath a gnarled apple tree. When its occupants exited, the excited soldiers crowded around to celebrate in earnest their continuing good luck.
“Sarge, did you see how many of those bastards we killed!” Marconi said.
“Yeah, Comrade’s finding out he’s going to be one dead mother if he messes with 2nd Platoon,” Richmond added.
With a wave of a gloved hand, the platoon sergeant put an end to such talk. The last thing they needed at this moment was to let down their guard. “Knock it off, you guys. This war ain’t over. Not by a long shot. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.” Jensen turned to Austin. “Seth, have you put out scouts?”
“Well, no, not yet, Bob.”
“Then, dammit, get to it. We’re out in the open here. If the Russians catch us like this, we’re all dead.”
Again, scouts were dispatched in every direction to protect the platoon.
Jensen examined their new defensive position. He’d driven through here hundreds of times. But unlike the border trail, the platoon sergeant had never given much thought to how to defend it.
While he looked around, it occurred to him that this wasn’t the ideal spot for the platoon to make its stand. Nevertheless, this time he had little choice.
Once E48 passed through the small town, the roadway entered open country. It would stay that way to the town of Marktredwitz and Camp Kinney. If the Russians broke through at Schirnding, they’d have considerably more freedom with which to operate. If the enemy got past Jensen’s platoon, it was going to be nearly impossible for the outmanned cavalry squadron to stop them. Jensen had no alternative than to make his stand here.
He went over to where Jelewski was standing. “Jewels, tell squadron we’re setting up to defend this position.”
“Can’t,” Jelewski said. “In the past few minutes, the Russians have begun jamming the entire frequency spectrum. They’re apparently putting everything they’ve got into making sure this squadron can’t further coordinate its efforts. There’s nothing but static and noise everywhere I turn.”
With communications cut off, Colonel Townes would no longer be able to control the desperate battle. From this moment on, it would be up to isolated groups of men, like the ones standing in the lifeless orchard, to fight on alone.
There weren’t many options on the open ground. Jensen would try to hide the Bradleys at the front of the wide orchard and hope for the best.
Under normal conditions, the cavalry soldiers would dig a sloped hole deep enough to cover each of the Bradleys up to its turret and gun systems. The Bradley would then be driven into its fighting hole. This would accomplish two things. First, it would make the Bradleys more difficult to discover. And second, the ground in front of each position would protect the Bradleys, creating challenging targets for their opponent to attack and kill.
They probably had the time to prepare such positions. Jensen suspected that the battered Russian column was going to take many hours to re-form, breach the burning barrier, and move forward once more. But even so, there would be no Bradley fighting holes dug on this night.
The problem wasn’t the Russians. The problem was the miserable weather. The ground beneath the deep snows was frozen solid. With their small entrenching tools, it would be impossible for the cavalry soldiers to break through the rock-hard surface.
It was the Wisconsin-born Austin who came up with the idea. “Bob, let’s build snow forts between two trees and use them to conceal the Bradleys. It won’t provide the protection being dug in would, but at least it’ll make us difficult to detect.”
Austin had built hundreds of such fortresses of snow in his days as a young snowball warrior. The East Texan Jensen had never seen a single one. Still, the idea didn’t sound half-bad.
“Well, it’s better than nothing, Seth. Pick out firing positions for the Bradleys and begin concealing them. I’ll work on setting up the supporting fields of fire.”
Before preparing for the forthcoming battle, Jensen decided to do one more thing—get any remaining civilians out of the village. Once the attack commenced, there probably wasn’t going to be much of a village left. He assumed most of the townspeople had awakened and fled the moment they heard the first exchange of gunfire. Nevertheless, he needed to make sure. He found Steele and Ramirez leaning against the Humvee.
“Go knock on every door in this stupid little town. If you find anyone, tell ’em to get the hell out of here as fast as they can. Check all the cellars, too. That’s where they’ll be hiding if anyone’s still around. Ramirez, you take the north side of the road. Steele, you’ve got the south.”
“But, Sarge,” Ramirez said, “this place must have at least two hundred houses in it.”
“Then I guess you’d better get your asses in gear. I want you to finish up and be back here by three at the latest. I’ve got plenty more planned for you two to do. Now beat it.”
The reluctant pair started shuffling up the highway.
“You’d better move faster than that if you don’t want the Russians using you for target practice,” Jensen said.
Ramirez scooped up a big glob of snow. He made himself a hurried snowball. The private hurled it at his platoon sergeant. It missed by a mile. Ramirez and Steele took off running, each headed for the first farmhouse on his side of the highway.
Jensen trudged back to see where Austin had placed the Bradleys. The five fighting vehicles were all in a straight line at the front of the orchard. Each was about one hundred yards from the next. Each was between a pair of apple trees. Three were on the left side of the road. Renoir’s was on the far left, three hundred yards from the highway. Foster’s was in the middle. Austin’s was nearest to E48. The remaining Bradleys were on the right. Richmond’s was one hundred yards away. Brown’s was in the extreme right-hand position.
With the Bradleys emplaced, the crews began dismounting. In the flickering half-light emanating from the fires in the east, each team started building a snow wall in front of their armored vehicle. If time permitted, they’d build the barrier far enough across to connect with the broad trees on both sides of them.
Fifteen years ago, playing in the snows used to be fun, Austin thought. He scooped up another armload of snow and placed it on the wall rising in front of his Bradley. Fifteen years ago, the wars he saw in the movies looked like fun, too. An ironic little chuckle escaped his lips. Oh well, at least building the fort was taking his mind off the numbing cold.
Once or twice each minute, from five miles away in the tree-lined valley, another secondary explosion would reverberate throughout the crisp night.
While the Bradley crews worked to hide their positions, Jensen broke off three dozen small branches from a nearby apple tree. If the Russians gave him the time, he’d get all the firing stakes in place. Still, he knew that even with adequate time, he didn’t have enough men to set up a decent defensive position.
In the coming battle, he’d leave two soldiers to fight from each Bradley. One would handle the TOWs, the other the Bushmaster and machine gun. There was no reason to have a driver; the platoon had nowhere to go.
Including Jensen, that would leave sixteen infantrymen on the ground to support the Bradleys. Two troopers would assist each fighting vehicle, consuming ten of his men. Two more would be set out on the northern edge of the orchard to protect the left flank. Another soldier would be placed on the southern edge to protect the right. The final pair would take the Humvee and find a position inside the village to protect the platoon’s rear. For all Jensen knew, Russian units could be west of his location and the platoon’s position already surrounded. The last thing he wanted was to prepare for an attack from the east and find himself fighting an enemy coming from the west.
No matter which way he arrayed his modest force, its position was going to be vulnerable. No matter what he tried, there were going to be holes in his lines
in every direction. What he would do, in whatever time the enemy allowed, was get the most from what was left of the platoon.
Taking two soldiers, he initiated the tedious process of working out the best positions for the men on the ground. He’d start with the infantry support for the Bradleys nearest the highway. Austin’s would be first.
He placed a soldier thirty yards to the right of the fire team. Jensen worked with the young trooper to plot out his position. Once determined, two branches were shoved into the snow a few feet in front of the location. The branch placed on the left marked the left boundary of the defender’s firing area. The second branch, placed on an angle to the right, marked the right firing boundary. This was the soldier’s field of fire. The soldier would be responsible for engaging everything coming within the boundaries of his sticks. Normally, the firing positions would overlap so more than one cavalryman would be available to engage any battlefield target. With so few men, however, overlapping fire was a luxury the platoon wouldn’t have.
With the first supporting position laid out, Jensen told the anxious private to “dig in.” To conceal his position, the soldier started creating his own miniature version of the Bradleys’ snow forts.
Jensen moved to the other side of Austin’s Bradley to place the second of his men. Jelewski would go into the position thirty yards to Austin’s left. With Jensen, the specialist laid out his field of fire. When the branches were in place, he turned to Jelewski.
“Get your position set. Once it’s ready, head over to the nearest farmhouse, find a phone, and make an attempt to contact the squadron.”
“But, Sarge, there are only two civilian landlines going into Camp Kinney, and there are likely to be thousands of Germans calling the camp hoping to find out what’s going on. So it’s going to be impossible.”
“I know, but we’ve got to try. Give it no more than an hour, then come back.”
The conversation completed, Jensen headed back to the highway to collect two soldiers to support Richmond’s position.
After everyone was settled in, the platoon sergeant would place himself in the center of the coming battle. He’d build his own snow fort on the right-hand side of the highway, just a few feet from the wide road. When the Russians broke through at Schirnding, they’d have to do it by going through him.
When he reached the highway to collect the next pair of soldiers, a final driver turned off his Bradley’s rebellious engine. The orchard should’ve been silent. Yet much to their chagrin, the windswept world around them was filled with fearful sounds.
The cavalrymen heard the unmistakable squeal of a tank column. The entire platoon froze. The enemy had taken them by surprise. The Americans were going to be caught in the open without proper defensive positions. Jensen pulled his night-vision goggles to his face. He frantically searched the entire length of the snow-covered ribbon of asphalt for signs of the impending attack.
There was nothing there. Other than the swirling snows, he could find no movement whatsoever on the two miles of E48 visible from the orchard. While he stood looking to the east, he slowly realized the awful truth. The sound wasn’t in front of him. The noise of the lethal tanks was coming from the rear. And it was growing louder.
Austin stood holding an armload of snow one hundred yards away.
“Seth, get word to the Bradleys that the enemy’s behind us!” Jensen yelled. “Tell them to crank their turrets around and get ready to repulse an attack from the west.”
When Austin acknowledged the command, Jensen turned to the soldiers nearest the roadway.
“Let’s go!”
Six soldiers, rifles in hand, raced with their sergeant toward the town. What the pitiful group was going to do to stop an armored column not a single one of them had a clue.
• • •
The instant the lead tank’s immense hull eased around the narrow corner, its commander spotted Ramirez and Steele. The African-American private was pounding on a door. His partner was standing on the corner across the street from him, casually drinking a beer. Neither had a weapon.
The menacing tank closed to within a few feet of the defenseless soldiers.
The commander’s hatch opened and a head popped out.
“Who the hell are you two?” the tank troop commander asked over the noise of the M-1s’ engines.
Ramirez placed his right arm behind his back in a feeble attempt to hide the beer. “Well, sir, our sergeant told us to get everybody out of this town.”
“That’s great, but who the hell’s your sergeant, and where the hell is he?”
“Sergeant First Class Jensen, sir. We’re what’s left of 2nd Platoon, Delta Troop. Our sergeant’s up there.” Ramirez pointed down the roadway. “He’s getting our Bradleys ready for the Russians.”
“How many Bradleys, and where are they?”
“They’re in the orchard on the other end of town, Captain,” Steele said. “We’ve only got five left. The Russians got the other ones when we fought them up at the border.”
“So you men have seen some action?”
“Shit yes, sir. You think I got this bandage on my head for nothing?” Ramirez said. He neglected to mention it was cement, not bullets, that had caused his injuries. “We’ve been in two battles already. Musta killed a thousand of those sons a bitches.”
Next came the question Ramirez had hoped to avoid.
“Where’d you get the beer, son?”
“Well . . . ah . . . you see, Captain, there’s this Gasthaus right up the street and . . .”
“You mean you found a Gasthaus open in the middle of the night, in the middle of a war?”
“Well . . . it . . . it wasn’t exactly open, sir.”
• • •
Jensen and his men scrambled from doorway to doorway, edging up the ageless street. The squeaking of the tank treads had stopped. The soldiers knew the tanks were no longer on the move. Unfortunately, the rumble of tank engines was extremely close. So they also knew the tanks were right around the next bend. When he reached the corner, Jensen signaled to Marconi to cover him. Ever so carefully, Jensen peeked around the bend.
There stood Ramirez and Steele in the middle of the street passing out bottles of beer to an entire troop of 1st Squadron tank crews.
“Ramirez!”
Hearing the thunder in his sergeant’s voice, Ramirez let go of the two beers he was carrying. They dropped harmlessly into the snows.
“Marconi, go back to the orchard and tell Austin it’s a false alarm. Tell him to continue preparing for an attack from the east.”
“Will do, Sarge.” In a slow trot, Marconi took off for the orchard. He was sure glad he wasn’t in Ramirez’s or Steele’s shoes right now.
Jensen stomped over to where his wayward privates stood staring at the ground. As he opened his mouth to begin a richly deserved tirade, Jensen spotted the captain standing in the open hatch of the tank above the pair.
“Oh, sorry, sir. Didn’t see you there.” Jensen didn’t salute. He and the captain knew that when the shooting started, the saluting stopped. “Sergeant Jensen, 2nd Platoon, Delta Troop.”
“That’s all right, Sergeant. Captain Murphy, Commanding Officer of Bravo Troop. I know you didn’t send your men out to serve as bartenders for a bunch of tank jockeys. But after your privates told me about all the Russian tanks waiting up ahead, I thought we might have one final beer for the road. I mean, at this point, what’s it going to hurt?”
Jensen thought about it, reached down, and picked up one of the bottles Ramirez had dropped. “You know something, Captain, I believe you might be right.”
The captain and his vehicle commanders dismounted. While they enjoyed what was likely to be the last beer of their lives, Jensen reported on what had happened to his platoon. His audience froze in midswallow when he told them he suspected the Russian force the Apaches had ch
ewed up consisted of at least three armored divisions.
Even if the attack helicopters had destroyed the one hundred armored vehicles Jensen believed they had, there were still over nine hundred Russian tanks and an equal number of BMPs with which to contend. Captain Murphy considered the possibility of a second beer. They knew their vastly superior tanks could run circles around the Russians. Even the T-90 had little chance against the M-1. A well-trained American tank unit could easily destroy three or four times its number in enemy armor. This, however, was eighty tanks to one.
Jensen glanced at his battered watch. It was 12:58. The war was one hour and thirteen minutes old. He wondered how many eternities that had been.
The final drops of strong beer savored, Captain Murphy walked toward the front of the orchard with Sergeant Jensen.
While they walked, they came up with a plan.
CHAPTER 15
January 29—12:58 a.m.
1st “Cobra Strike” Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment
Rhein-Main Air Base
Army Sergeant Larry Fowler drove the two-and-a-half-ton truck out the gaping nose of the C-5 cargo plane. On the back of the truck sat a modest-sized metal compartment with a small rear door. Clear of the plane, Fowler’s ground guide, Private First Class Jeffrey Paul, scrambled into the truck’s passenger seat. All around them, C-5s were in the final stages of disgorging their cargo—a Patriot missile battalion.
The first thing Fowler noticed was that the Germany he’d left over a year earlier was the same. Although, Fowler had to admit, the snow was deeper than he’d ever remembered seeing in any of his previous German winters. The damp cold of Europe was quite a change from the high desert air of El Paso. Fowler’s truck inched across the tarmac. It took its place at the rear of the Charlie Battery line.
“Sure is cold out there,” Jeffrey Paul said, trying to make conversation.