The Red Line

by Walt Gragg

  CHAPTER 30

  January 29—8:48 a.m.

  3rd Regiment, 105th Parachute Division

  Ten Miles Northeast of Ramstein Air Base

  As they’d practiced untold times, the moment the men of the 3rd Regiment picked themselves up off the ground, they raced to their vehicles. In two minutes, the drop zone was secured. In ten minutes, seventeen hundred parachutists were rolling onto an icy roadway. The air base’s main gates, on the northern and western fences, would be their primary objective. When they left the broad field, a company of parachutists, 140 of the regiment’s best men, split from the column. The smaller force raced away at top speed. They headed straight for their goal—the woods outside the sprawling base’s eastern fence.

  Ten miles to the southwest, the air base waited. The giant base looked upon open country on its northern and western fences. The southern and eastern perimeters were on the edge of a heavily forested area. The attack plan was simple. The regiment would send a parachute company into the eastern woods. Their purpose would be to provide a powerful diversion. On foot, the 140 would strike the eastern fence, hoping to fool the Americans into believing that the primary assault was coming from the east. As soon as the Americans reacted to the ploy, the main force would use their armored vehicles to smash through the northern and western sides of the base.

  The bulk of the initial offensive, the feint at the eastern fence, would be directed at Arturo Rios and his small band.

  So far, everything was working precisely as planned. Thirty minutes after first touching German soil, 140 of the world’s finest soldiers slipped into the heavy woods on the eastern edge of the air base. They started threading their way through the thick blanket of evergreens. It wouldn’t take long to reach their objective.

  From the moment the regiment touched down, American scouts had observed their every action. They’d seen the smaller force entering the eastern woods. They’d watched the larger column heading straight for the open sides of the air base. American intelligence had been solid. The Ramstein base commander wasn’t fooled by the Russians’ plan. The force preparing to attack the eastern fence concerned him. He knew, however, that it was the main column he had to stop.

  For the moment, the base commander’s assets were quite limited. Almost all of his fighters were still involved in the air battle, had been shot down by MiGs, or had just returned to be rearmed and refueled. The timing of General Yovanovich’s plan had counted on the Americans finding themselves in just such a predicament.

  As the Russians neared, all the Ramstein commanding general had at his disposal were five A-10 Warthog ground-attack fighters and six rescue helicopters. He ordered the A-10s and the helicopters to take to the sky and attack the invader’s main column.

  There was no time to lose. The determined parachute regiment was five miles from the air base and closing fast. If not stopped, they’d hit both gates in ten minutes. The A-10s roared down the runway toward Rios’s bunker. They leaped from the ground and headed north to intercept the enemy regiment.

  The stubby Warthogs churned through the low skies in search of the lengthy column. With the parachutists so close, it took no time at all for the American pilots to locate the target. In the snowy meadows northeast of the base, there were Russian vehicles everywhere they looked. The open ground of the killing field was in front of them. The Americans dove headlong toward the surging regiment. Their aircrafts’ seven-barrel cannons blazed. The first of the Russian armored vehicles burst into flames. A second quickly followed. Fire and smoke billowed forth, choking the pristine skies.

  The battle for Ramstein had begun.

  At the precise moment the A-10s slammed into the leading edge of the main column, the parachutist company in the woods initiated an all-out assault on the eastern fence. A desperate struggle erupted on all sides. Hand grenades, mortars, and automatic gunfire ripped into the Americans. Fierce soldiers with powder-blue berets in their pockets rushed toward the fence.

  “Here they come!” Rios screamed. He squeezed the trigger on his machine gun, firing round after round into the snow-covered trees on the far side of the wire.

  His countrymen’s M-4s soon joined in.

  • • •

  A second of the elite division’s parachute regiments moved through the open country toward the smaller American fighter base. Fifty miles northwest of Ramstein, Spangdahlem and its three thousand airmen braced for the Russian attack.

  A half dozen Warthogs, each armed and ready for battle, tore out of the air base to slow the hundreds of vehicles of the widespread Russian column. The A-10s, one of the greatest killers of armor in the world, ripped into the determined regiment. With the mighty cannons in their noses spewing certain death, and four five-hundred-pound bombs at their disposal, the A-10s charged straight for the oncoming parachutists. By the end of the tough little Warthogs’ first pass, trails of thick smoke filled the skies over a broad area. The sounds of battle spread far and wide. The Russian light armor wilted beneath the intense air attack.

  The Warthogs had been built specifically for a war in central Europe. Like the Apache helicopter, they’d been designed to hit and run. The slow fighter’s greatest ally was the deep woods of the vast German forests. But the area around Spangdahlem was somewhat open country. There would be few places for the A-10s to hide. And the Russian parachute regiment was teeming with air-defense weapons.

  The American attack had scarcely begun when the first of the Warthogs exploded, the victim of a shoulder-mounted air-defense missile. Its fiery remains fell to earth.

  Still, the A-10 pilots were undeterred. The stodgy Warthogs struck again and again. Each time they dove straight for the Russian column. They dropped bomb after bomb. The grotesque aircrafts’ lethal noses blazed with lightning bursts. Their magazines spewed forth death and destruction from the ugly planes at a rate of two thousand armor-piercing 30mm shells per minute. They ripped through the tops and sides of the thinly armored airborne vehicles. The American pilots clawed at the enemy with everything they had. Each knew that his wife and children were in the base’s housing area.

  This was no battle for God and country. It was going to be much more personal for the pilots and airmen of Spangdahlem. Their families’ lives were on the line.

  With each brief squeeze of their cannon’s trigger, two, sometimes three or more, Russian armored vehicles died at the hands of the Americans. With each passing A-10, ten . . . fifteen . . . twenty Russian soldiers were killed. With each determined run, carnage ripped at the enemy column.

  And with nearly every pass, another of the slow-moving A-10s pitifully tumbled from the skies beneath the Russians’ fusillade of air-defense missiles and guns. Even so, the surviving A-10s fought on.

  Neither side would give an inch. Ignoring the horror all around them, the tenacious parachutists kept coming. Relentlessly, the determined enemy column pressed on through the raging fires. Every second, they were growing nearer to their objective.

  At Spangdahlem, the airmen watched the clouds of smoke filling the morning sky. The black plumes were getting closer. The sounds of battle were drawing near. With each new explosion, it was becoming more and more evident that the Russians would soon be at their doorstep.

  Another pair of A-10s leaped into the sky. That was the last of them. The remainder of Spangdahlem’s Warthogs were on missions at the front lines or not yet ready to return to combat. And as at Ramstein, the base’s fighters were, for the moment, out of the war. Behind the A-10s, four Air Force helicopters with machine guns mounted in their doors rose into the blue. They were rescue helicopters, not intended to perform any combat mission beyond protecting themselves. But they were all the base commander had left.

  The A-10s made pass after pass, wreaking havoc on the enemy column. The Russians responded with a lethal curtain of antiaircraft fire. By the score, the parachutists died. And one by one, the Warthogs dropped fro
m the smoldering skies until there were no more. It was suicidal, but as the final A-10 fell, the helicopters bolted forward and attacked. With their machine guns blazing, they dove at the Russians.

  The rescue helicopters were easy prey for the regiment’s bristling air defenses. By the end of their first pass, the few identifiable pieces remaining from each of the defeated helicopters were smoldering in the snows. Every crew member was dead.

  The Russians had suffered severe losses. That, however, wouldn’t stop the parachute regiment.

  There would be no feint at Spangdahlem.

  The airborne soldiers’ primary armored vehicles were their BMD-4s. The twelve-ton, extremely fierce BMDs were a cross between a small tank and an armored personnel carrier. Each carried a crew of three and five infantry soldiers. Each had an exceptionally impressive array of weapons, capable of inflicting severe harm on even main battle tanks. These nasty little scorpions carried an immense, highly deadly sting. Fifty of the regiment’s BMDs had survived the A-10s’ onslaught. With the BMDs in the lead, over 150 combat vehicles carrying twelve hundred men roared toward Spangdahlem’s main gate.

  The Russians rammed headlong into the air base. The Americans responded with everything they could lay their hands on. The air police had three dozen LAWs—light antitank weapons—and six armored cars armed with .50-caliber machine guns. The BMDs’ armor, while stout in the front, was less than an inch thick on its rear and sides to allow for their transport and drop with the airborne forces. An airman with an M-4 rifle posed no threat to them, but the LAWs were more than a match for their opponent. And the heavy machine guns could easily rip right through a BMD’s thin side armor.

  As the first BMD raced through the air base’s main gate, an air policeman raised a LAW to his shoulder and fired. The BMD erupted in flames. For a moment, the blazing armored vehicle blocked the attackers’ entrance onto Spangdahlem. At full speed, another BMD raced up behind its burning brother. The second BMD slammed into the destroyed vehicle. It slowly shoved it through the front gate. Others dashed into the opening the BMD had created. The Americans fired their armor-killing weapons and fell back. Using their 100mm main gun, Bastion missiles, 30mm autocannon, and machine guns, the BMDs burst through the overmatched defenders. They attacked in every direction. The slaughter had commenced. Twelve hundred expert killers were far too many for the base’s inexperienced defenders to handle. The LAWs and armored cars had slowed the initial advance. Yet within minutes, Russian vehicles were roaming the flight line. They raced onto the runways and headed for their objectives.

  For each Russian soldier lost, five airmen went down. The Americans fell back once more. With satchel charges in hand, the airborne soldiers raced into the hangars and fortified bunkers. The A-10s, F-22s, F-35s, and F-16s burst into flames. Tremendous explosions filled the morning as countless numbers of America’s fighter aircraft died on the snowy ground at Spangdahlem. The vicious fight for control of the air base went on unabated. Hand-to-hand combat raged from building to building and from room to room.

  In the middle of the desperate battle, a 100mm shell soared into the base’s massive ammunition dump. The explosion of thousands of missiles, rockets, and bombs was as powerful as that of a small nuclear device. It leveled everything in its path for two miles in all directions. A surging fireball rose thirty thousand feet into the air. Two-thirds of the base collapsed beneath its crushing shock wave. On both sides, hundreds died from the detonating armament’s all-consuming blow. The explosion could be heard seventy-five miles away.

  An hour into the battle, it was clear to the American base commander that all was lost. He issued the only order he could. Everyone was to retreat to protect the six thousand women and children trapped in the housing area. Two gates to the south remained in American hands. They had to get the dependents out while there was still time.

  The airmen fought with everything they had to defend their families. Car after car filled with terrified dependents rushed out of Spangdahlem. They raced down an icy, winding road toward the safety of the Army installation at Kaiserslautern, forty miles to the southeast. Children watched in horror as their fathers died trying to protect them. Thirty-one women and nineteen children were killed during the attack. More than two hundred were wounded. Four thousand fleeing women and children would evade capture. Two thousand more were trapped when the final routes to freedom were overrun by the parachutists.

  Fifteen hundred American corpses lay in the stained snows at Spangdahlem. A handful of airmen had escaped. The rest of the base defenders found themselves prisoners of war, two hundred miles inside their own lines.

  One-fourth of Spangdahlem’s fighters had been downed during the Russian air attack. Half had been destroyed by the paratroopers. The final one-quarter were presently involved in the air battle or were away supporting the intensifying combat at the front lines. Those still in the air would never return to Spangdahlem. Instead, they would fly across the Channel to land at Lakenheath.

  With vengeance in their hearts and revenge in their souls, they’d carry on the struggle for Germany from England.

  Spangdahlem was no more.

  In their Humvees and trucks, a battalion from the recently arriving 82nd Airborne Division was rushing toward the air base. But with frantic Germans clogging every roadway, they’d be too late to save Spangdahlem. By the time they arrived, not a building would stand or an aircraft survive.

  The shooting of the defeated base defenders would soon begin.

  • • •

  Forty yards away, a parachutist stepped from behind a broad tree. He hurled a hand grenade over the high fence. The grenade fell nine feet short of the large bunker. Rios fired upon the figure that had thrown the grenade. The machine gun’s .50-caliber shells waltzed across the Russian’s chest. They tore huge holes in his upper body. The mortally wounded Russian tumbled into the tangled branches.

  “Get down!” Rios screamed.

  The seven Americans clawed at the frozen ground. The hand grenade exploded. Sharp-edged metal flew in all directions. Inside their sandbagged worlds, the airmen could hear death whizzing by. Lethal pieces of the grenade smashed into the sandbags and burrowed for the cowering airmen. The layers of sand overwhelmed the deadly metal. Safe in their brown world, not a scratch found its way onto any of the airmen.

  Four additional A-10s were ready to enter the battle. They screamed down the runway. The Warthogs rushed to meet the enemy in the open country three miles north of Ramstein.

  The Russians on the eastern fence threw everything they had at the small group of defenders. They pressed their advantage. The widespread line of Americans struggled to hold on. There would be no further help for the airmen fighting at the distant fence. The base commander had no choice.

  The general could do nothing further to protect the eastern edge of the base. He would hold his reserves and wait for the major assault soon to commence at the base’s main gates. And he’d pray that, somehow, the desperate defenders on the eastern perimeter wouldn’t fail.

  • • •

  “Let ’em have it!” Rios screamed.

  He struggled to his knees and flailed away at the tree line once more. His machine gun’s deep tones were joined by the staccato sounds of the M-4s. They fought to hold on against the superior Russians. All up and down the sprawling eastern fence, the parachutists fired their automatic weapons. Their primary goal was the elimination of the main bunkers along the lengthy defensive line armed with the powerful machine guns. The Americans futilely attempted to match the enemy’s firepower.

  Sixty Americans on the open ground, with a few sandbags to protect them, fought 140 proficient killers protected by the sheltering woods. Over the raucous songs of the guns, anguished screams could be heard all along the expanse as defenders and attackers alike succumbed to the withering fire.

  Fifty yards to Rios’s right, Michaels took a bullet to the face. T
he bullet’s entry hole was no bigger than a dime. The exit hole in the back of his head was the size of the airman’s fist.

  On Rios’s team there were now only six.

  CHAPTER 31

  January 29—9:05 a.m.

  Military Airlift Command

  Rhein-Main Air Base

  Rhein-Main had been one of the last major assets returned to the Germans during the American phasedown. And it had been one of the first given back to the Americans as they slowly initiated the process of rebuilding their forces in Europe. The air base had been back in American hands for a little over eighteen months and was finally reaching full operational status.

  At the immense transport air base, the Americans were struggling to hold on against the fiercely determined Russian onslaught. The Rhein-Main base commander had no attack aircraft he could call upon to protect his installation. But because his base was enclosed in a thick forest, he did have a tactical advantage. The forest forced the Russians to focus the bulk of their attack at a few central locations. The main thrust had come at a small rear gate hidden in a thick mantle of snow-covered green. Deep within the woods, the Americans clung to the rusting gate with every ounce of courage they could muster. For fifteen minutes, a handful of air police armed with LAWs and three heavy machine guns held the narrow gate against an attacking force of two hundred armored vehicles.

  At the main gate, the Americans had succeeded for the moment in beating back a smaller attack.

  With the trees to conceal them, the regimental commander sent the rest of his parachutists out on foot to probe at the fences for weak spots.

  There were many.

  On the southern and western fences, the Russians crushed token resistance. After blasting gaping holes in both, they exploited them to the fullest. Three hundred parachutists scurried through the southern fence and pressed on toward the flight line. One hundred broke through the western wire.

  At the back gate, the air police crumpled. One hundred and eighty soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division had arrived on a commercial airliner fifteen minutes prior to the attack. Armed with only the M-4s they’d carried with them on the plane, they rushed to the rear gate.