by Larry Bond
Desaix moodily contemplated the map. Perhaps they would have to abandon the territory won in Hungary in order to send part of General Fabvier’s IV Corps north. He scowled, detesting the thought of giving the Hungarian rebels a propaganda victory they would undoubtedly trumpet from the rooftops.
His eye fell on Belgium. Where the hell were those two combat brigades the Belgians had been ordered to provide? Those troops were desperately needed to free French soldiers for frontline service. Never mind the delays imposed by American air strikes on the German and French rail net, the damned Belgians could have walked to their new posts by now! He made a mental note to raise the issue with Belgium’s ineffectual ambassador and moved on.
JULY 3 — HEADQUARTERS, 7TH PANZER DIVISION, NEAR BYDGOSZCZ, POLAND
The sultry July morning seemed to last forever. General Karl Leibnitz, Willi von Seelow, and the other two brigade commanders sat sweltering in the meager shade provided by a tree overlooking a cleared patch of grazing land. After two sleepless nights, they were hot and tired and dirty.
The lack of any breeze seemed symbolic, as well as uncomfortable. Nothing moved. Although they could have set up the division headquarters in the open, the trees were much safer. The unit was actually spread across one edge of a large clump of woods, tucked back inside about fifty meters or so.
The division’s four M577 headquarters trucks were parked back-to-back in a cross, with a camouflaged awning spread on poles between them. Around that were the other trucks and tents of the headquarters, all carefully concealed, and in turn surrounded by fighting positions and foxholes for the headquarters troops. A few Marder APCs were deployed around the perimeter for added firepower.
Willi glanced down at his watch again. Only a few minutes had passed since he’d last checked the time. The man they were waiting for was late. As usual.
During the twenty-four hours since they’d sent that French cretin Cambon packing, Leibnitz and the other officers of the 7th Panzer had already ignored one peremptory order to advance, and another directing them all to report to II Corps headquarters for an “urgent conference.”
II Corps’ latest message was more promising. It had requested a meeting, to resolve “difficulties in the command structure.” To do that, General Montagne himself would come to the 7th Panzer’s headquarters.
Now they waited for the French corps commander’s helicopter, due to arrive momentarily. They still had no idea what Montagne would say, but his willingness to talk at all was heartening. “First intelligent thing the French have done,” Leibnitz had muttered.
Willi nodded to himself. That was true enough. Certainly the other actions the French had taken were less reassuring. The supply cutoff had left the division with just enough gas and ammunition for one defensive battle. Now scouting parties were reporting heavy roadblocks across all major roads, and most of the secondary roads. In the circumstances, it seemed clear that any major German movement might trigger a new conflict, this time between erstwhile allies. In the field, in front of a hostile army, that would be worse than disastrous, and Willi’s military training rebelled at the idea.
He grimaced. This situation had to be resolved quickly. Food and fuel were incidentals compared to the strategic issues.
So far, the Americans had not counterattacked. Nobody knew how much of the “mutiny” was known on the other side, but both the French and German participants were doing their best to keep it quiet. Like family members with a grievance, they still argued in whispers, lest the neighbors overhear.
A shout from an enlisted man brought them to their feet. A gray-and-green-camouflaged Puma helicopter, moving low and slow, was in full view, coming in for a landing in the clearing in front of the headquarters.
Willi glanced left and right. Soldiers in nearby foxholes tracked the helicopter, an indication of just how far relations with their “allies” had deteriorated.
The Puma settled to the ground in a cloud of dust and dried grass, its rotors seeming to take forever to slow. Finally, as the blades spun down to a stop, the side hatch slid open.
Suddenly Willi heard the crash of an explosion behind him, and the rattle of small-arms fire from somewhere further back among the trees. He spun around, looking for the source. The shooting continued, doubling in intensity.
New rifles crackled, from closer now. The soldiers near him were firing at the grounded Puma. Instead of French generals, two squads of French troops in full combat gear were pouring out, shooting on the move. Rounds whined over his head and smacked into the trees close by.
Christ. He knelt down, unslinging the MP5 submachine gun he’d been carrying. Leibnitz and the other brigade commanders were already prone. They all kept weapons close to hand. Nobody wanted to follow Bremer’s fate.
Just beyond the clearing, a French Gazelle attack helicopter popped into view over the trees, followed closely by another. Hugging the ground, the two gunships swept toward the woods, searching for targets. A puff of smoke appeared under one machine, and a missile leapt away, flashing into the trees.
One of the Marders, parked a few dozen meters away, fireballed — hit broadside by a warhead designed to kill tanks. A powerful, ringing explosion blew the APC’s 25mm gun and turret high into the air.
But German Marders also carried portable Milan antitank missile launchers. Even as the French HOT missile struck, the rest of the APC’s crew avenged its destruction. A Milan streaked upward from a nearby foxhole toward the Gazelle. Flying too low and slow to evade, the helicopter took a direct hit — just under its rotor transmission. The blades and part of its engine broke clear, spinning out of sight, while the rest of the airframe, burning brightly, slammed into the ground.
In response, the other Gazelle gunned the treeline, almost casually lacing it with 20mm shells. Von Seelow could hear men screaming as the cannon rounds ripped through their foxholes.
Killing them took time, though — time enough for a second Marder, still concealed by camouflage netting, to slew its own 25mm turret around and fire. One long, clattering burst seemed to pin the French helicopter in place. Armor-piercing rounds tore off pieces of the Gazelle until what was left was no longer fit to fly. It dropped to the ground, a mass of burning metal.
The Marder fired again, this time aiming for the French Puma. More than a dozen explosive shells hit the helicopter hard enough to knock it over and set it ablaze. The commandos it had carried, now pinned down in the open, fired back, but they had lost surprise, as well as their supporting firepower. Several were already dead or badly wounded. The rest wouldn’t last much longer, Willi thought grimly.
Gunfire and grenade explosions still rattled and thumped in the woods behind him. The French were launching a two-pronged attack, he realized. One force had infiltrated through the trees to hit the headquarters from behind, while the Puma brought in this second unit to cut off any attempted retreat.
Leibnitz scrambled up. “Our men need help, gentlemen.” He jerked his head toward the sound of firing. “Come.”
Willi nodded and gripped his submachine gun tighter. Personal weapons out and ready, the four senior officers scuttled away from the clearing, moving deeper into the woods. They were only twenty meters short of their command trucks, when a long, searing burst of fire drove them to ground.
Jansen, commander of the 20th Panzer Brigade, screamed once and then fell silent. He’d been shot through the head.
Dead soldiers, both French and German, sprawled everywhere. Heart pounding now, Von Seelow lay still, scanning the surrounding area for signs of living enemies. Where had those shots come from?
They’d hit the dirt close to a burning truck, but the choking smoke and flames forced them to edge away from the cover it provided. The closest trees, spaced meters apart, were no help. They only made it more difficult to see. The sounds of firing still surrounded them, spasmodic, but almost constant overall, and the flames crackling noisily nearby further confused the picture.
Suddenly a pair of French soldi
ers burst into view, running hard toward some point off to Willi’s right. They spotted the prone Germans at almost the same instant and skidded to a stop, swinging their assault rifles around. They were too late.
Von Seelow pulled the trigger on his submachine gun, spraying the two Frenchmen with several short, deadly bursts. Hit repeatedly, both men went down in a tangled heap.
The firing had attracted attention, though. Out the corner of one eye, Willi caught a flicker of movement as a second pair of commandos appeared and then went prone, diving into some brush a short distance away. Desperately he swung the MP5 around, already knowing he was too late.
Two grenades sailed toward the German officers.
“Down!” he shouted, burying his face in the dirt.
One landed too far to the right and exploded harmlessly, but the other landed a bare two meters away.
Whummp.
A wall of hot air, almost a solid thing, buffeted Willi, threatening to lift him off the ground. He clung desperately, knowing that hundreds of steel fragments were embedded in that mass, sleeting out from a point only a man’s height away. The howling sound of their passage, though, was masked by the explosion itself, and by the time von Seelow wondered whether any would hit him, they were past, and he was still alive.
His training told him what must come next, and he fought with his body, trying to shake off the dizziness and to raise his weapon. It seemed to weigh a ton, and his arms would not point it in the right direction. He was half-blind, too, with the dust blown in his eyes and not enough time to wipe it out.
Finally, still prone, he levered the submachine gun over and fired a long burst toward the enemy. It was not a well-aimed burst, but it was fast, and it worked.
He didn’t hit anything, but the two French soldiers, rising to follow their grenades in on the heels of the blast, were caught by surprise. They dove back into cover.
Now, Leibnitz and Schisser, the 21st’s acting commander, both pumped short accurate bursts from their own submachine guns, one after another, into the brush. They were rewarded by screams and a low, gurgling moan that slowly died away.
When they stopped shooting, the woods were quiet, the stillness unnerving after the deafening din just moments before. With his ears still ringing, Willi kept swiveling his weapon from side to side. Did the trees hide more armed enemies, waiting for them to move? Or were the French defeated, his freedom proof of their failure? In the first case, lying still and waiting was the key to survival, in the other it just made him feel a little silly.
“Herr General!” It was Major Feist’s voice. Von Seelow started at the sound, suddenly realizing how tense he was. Leibnitz called back. The danger was over, only minutes after it appeared.
Willi stood slowly, shaking off the last of the grenade’s effects. He walked over to the little clump of brush where they had just poured so much fire.
Two bodies lay at odd angles.
He pushed one corpse with the toe of his boot, rolling the man over, studying his uniform. A badge with a silver wing and sword on the dead man’s red beret identified him as a member of the 13th Airmobile Dragoons, an elite outfit like Germany’s own Long-Range Scout Troops or the American Special Forces. And yet they had been beaten. Willi nodded grimly. Not bad for a bunch of headquarters troops. He had to give Leibnitz a lot of the credit, though. Like Willi himself, the 7th Panzer’s commander had learned a hard lesson from the Polish raid that had killed Georg Bremer. The older man had taken special pains to strengthen his division’s headquarters security.
He turned away from the dead men.
Feist, panting, had arrived and was almost frantically reporting to Leibnitz. “No, Herr General, there were no reports of any other attacks, either by the Poles or the French. I’ve counted at least twenty French bodies so far. We’re trying to see how they infiltrated in, but it must have taken them a long time, almost all night.”
Leibnitz growled, almost an animal sound. The French never meant to negotiate. Looking at the German wounded and dead lying all around, he said, “It appears we have another enemy.”
Willi, ignoring rank, countered, “No, only one.”
The immediacy of combat had prevented him from fully appreciating Montagne’s treachery, but he could feel the anger burning inside. Before, the French had been self-serving fools. Now they were criminals.
The general nodded. He turned back to Feist. “Pass the order to all units. Tell them to fire on any Frenchmen they see.” He paused. “Then get me a secure channel. I need to talk to Berlin.”
JULY 4 — ABOARD USS INCHON, AMPHIBIOUS GROUP, OFF THE BELGIAN COAST
Inchon’s darkened bridge was not a good place to pace. Too many people and too much equipment filled the space, and the near-total darkness just increased the chance of a collision. Admiral Jack Ward still tried, though, like a nervous father in a 1930s comedy, burning off adrenaline as best he could while they waited and waited. Half an hour seemed like an eternity.
He picked up the glasses and stepped out onto the bridge wing again. The cool North Sea night air, stiffened by a fifteen-knot formation speed, made him glad for the khaki jacket.
The Belgian coast was a dark line, invisible except for the uneven horizon it gave the water. A few scattered lights marked small towns, while a larger smear of brightness showed where the port of Ostend lay. It was a dark, quiet scene, with only a thin sliver of moon and almost no wind to stir the sea.
The darkness could hide a lot, like the blacked-out Task Force or the amphibious craft moving toward the beach. The first wave of LCACs — high-speed, air-cushion landing craft — had been launched fifteen minutes ago.
The coast seemed distant, but he knew better than anyone that they had been standing into danger since midnight. They were out of artillery range, but coastal missile batteries were mobile and hard to find.
Ward and his captains had been lucky so far. Taking advantage of Combined Forces naval superiority, he’d risked a daylight move the day before, and a short nighttime run, to put the assault force in position for a night landing. Now the darkness was on their side, and with luck the first wave would be ashore and well established by dawn.
Still, he fretted. No detections and good weather had given them a good start, but the element of surprise could be lost to one fisherman with a radio or a beachcomber with sharp eyes. Stealth was everything in a landing like this.
Virtually every aircraft in the Combined Forces was overhead, providing air cover, knocking out nearby radars and communications stations, or hitting nearby shore bases. Raids on Dunkerque, Calais, and Lille should keep the French occupied until it was too late.
If they were caught this close to land, with boats and helicopters deployed, even the weakened EurCon air and naval forces would have a field day. They were all taking a terrible chance.
He glanced down at Inchon’s flight deck. A row of Ospreys sat waiting, with men seated in neat groups near each VTOL aircraft. Within minutes of the word, they would be airborne, along with similar contingents from the other ships in the force. Aircraft were the quickest way to get men ashore, but vulnerable. Seaborne troops would make the initial landing.
Ward walked over to the dark figure sitting in the admiral’s chair. Motionless, the man appeared asleep, and by rights should have been at this hour. Ward knew differently. “We’ll know soon, Ross.”
“How fast do those LCACs move, Admiral?” Huntington asked quietly.
“About forty knots, loaded like they are. It’ll take them about half an hour to make the run to the beach. During World War II, it used to take twice that long with the ships much closer in.”
“What could be longer than forever?” Huntington asked half-jokingly.
CHARLIE COMPANY, 3RD MARINE BATTALION, FIFTH MARINE EXPEDITIONARY BRIGADE
Braving the cold forty-knot wind and clinging tightly against the LCAC’s rough ride, Captain Charlie Gates, USMC, peered out over the bow ramp. “As if I could see anything,” he muttered. Even wit
h his night-vision gear, they were still too far off the coast. The darkness could hide an army, he knew, and by the time he saw the flashes of hostile fire it would be too late for him, and for his men.
If he couldn’t see anything, anyone waiting on the beach couldn’t, either, unless they had night-vision gear, which these days was no trick. But they wouldn’t shoot now, he knew. They’d wait until the LCAC had beached itself and the ramp was down. Then they’d…
Cut that shit out, he thought to himself. He had his orders, and intelligence said there’d be no fire from the beach. Right.
Gates turned to check his men. In the dimness he could only make out forms, but they were all where he had last seen them, standing or sitting, waiting out the thirty-minute ride to the beach. Loaded down with weapons and equipment, there was no really comfortable way to rest, but his marines managed as best they could.
They were close now. He turned to the corner where his lieutenants were clustered and pumped a fist up and down. With a deceptive carelessness, he watched his officers find their sergeants, motion spreading through the company as his men took their places.
He knew what should be waiting. A nice, smooth, shallow grade led to a low seawall capped by a frontage road. The far side was lined by warehouses and light industry, perfect cover for enemy tanks or infantry — if they were there.
The roar of the LCAC’s turbines changed pitch as it slowed. They didn’t want to plow into the beach at forty knots, after all. Even at the lower note, the LCAC’s engines produced a deafening howl. He felt like it would have been quieter riding a steam calliope. If there were hostiles here, they didn’t need to see him. They must have been able to hear the marines coming for miles around.